THE  RECORD 


OF  AN 


ADVENTUROUS   LIFE 


BY 

HENRY  MAYERS   HYNDMAN 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 
1911 

Ml  rights  reserved 


COPYRIGHT,   1911, 

BY  THE  MACMILLAN   COMPANY. 


Set  up  and  electrotyped.     Published  October,  1911. 


Norfonoti 

J.  8.  Gushing  Co.  —  Berwick  &  Smith  Co. 
Norwood,  Mass.,  U.S.A. 


PREFACE  TO  THE   AMERICAN  EDITION 

I  ALWAYS  find  a  preface  a  very  difficult  matter  to  indite. 
There  is  something,  in  my  opinion,  more  formal  in  this  sort 
of  writing  than  in  any  other.  That  is  how  I  felt,  at  any 
rate,  about  the  preface  to  the  English  edition  which,  now  I 
have  done  it,  looks  to  me  stiff  and  clumsy  enough.  I  don't 
know  why,  but  sending  this  foreword  to  folks  at  a  distance 
I  am  not  so  much  hampered  by  my  own  desire  to  be  spick- 
and-span.  Distance  lends  ease.  An  American  audience 
and  atmosphere  encourage  a  lighter  form  of  address  and  a 
less  punctilious  literary  apparel: 

A  cuff  neglectful,  and  thereby 
Ribbands  to  flow  confusedly,  — 
A  winning  wave,  deserving  note, 
In  the  tempestuous  petticoat,  — 
A  careless  shoe-string  in  whose  tie 
I  see  a  wild  civility,  — 
Do  more  bewitch  me  than  when  art 
Is  too  precise  in  every  part. 

Ruban  perdu,  boucle  de*faite 
Elle  £tait  bien  la  voil&  mieux. 

C'est  de  vos  sceurs  la  plus  parfaite, 
Sylphes  legers  soyez  mes  dieux! 

Sylphes  Ie*gers  soyez  mes  dieux !  Far  be  it  from  me  to 
compare  my  halting  prose  to  the  graceful  movements  of  these 
light-limbed  fairy  goddesses,  at  whose  shrine  I  worship.  I 
but  imitate  and  stumble  from  a  long  way  off. 

When,  however,  a  man  has  had  the  assurance  to  talk 
through  a  few  hundred  pages  about  himself,  his  career,  and 

v 

241433 


Vi  PREFACE   TO   THE  AMERICAN  EDITION 

the  men  and  women  he  has  met,  it  is  too  late  in  the  day  to 
pretend  that  diffidence  is  his  most  characteristic  quality. 

I  speak  of  the  world  and  the  people  in  it  as  I  have  found 
them,  and  not  the  least  pleasant  part  of  my  time  was  that 
spent  in  the  United  States.     As  I  venture  upon  no  serious 
criticism,  it  is  possible  that  what  I  say  will  be  taken  in 
good    part,    though   I   do  remember  two  charming  young 
ladies  at  Harrison,  N.Y.,  who  denounced  me,  with  engaging 
vivacity,  for  being  the  fellow-countryman  of  the  impertinent 
creature  who  had  ventured  to  travesty  American  girls  in 

II  Daisy  Miller"  !    They  never  forgave  me  for  telling  them 
that  the  family  of  Mr.  Henry  James,  Junior,  whom  I  knew 
pretty  well  in  those  days,  had  been  settled  in  Albany  for 
200   years,    and   that   the   novelist   himself  was   born   and 
brought  up  in  that  scarcely  English  city.     I  have  recognised 
ever  since  that  American  hospitality  must  not  be  repaid  by 
even  the  most  delicate  persiflage  to  the  address  of  the  ruling 
class    across    the    Atlantic  —  American    maidens    to    wit. 
Alas !   that  was  more  than  thirty  years  ago.     I  waft  those 
damsels  my  regrets  across  the  sea. 

When  I  first  crossed  the  continent  from  the  Pacific  Slope 
to  the  Atlantic  Seaboard  vast  herds  of  buffalo  still  wan- 
dered masterless  and  free  over  the  Western  plains,  Brigham 
Young  of  multifarious  wifedom  was  lord  of  all  he  surveyed 
in  Utah,  sky-scrapers  were  unknown  in  New  York  City,  the 
Brevoort  House  and  the  Fifth  Avenue  Hotel  were  fashion- 
able resorts,  and  Boston  still  retained  its  pre-eminence  as  the 
Hub  of  the  Universe  and  (I  hope  it  does  still)  as  the  home 
of  the  Somerset  Club.  In  the  generation  which  has  passed 
since  my  last  visit  a  new  race  has  grown  up,  suckled  on 
electric  trams  and  nurtured  on  motor-cars.  Visions  of 
sudden  death,  I  am  told,  have  now  become  a  daily  neces- 
sary of  business  life  above,  and  underground  railways  pre- 
pare the  perspiring  wayfarer  for  the  still  warmer  climate 
which  later  on  may  be  his  portion  below.  Unreasoning 


PREFACE  TO  THE  AMERICAN  EDITION  vii 

hurry,  in  fact,  has  deepened  into  ferocious  rush.  I  am 
pressed  by  many  well-intentioned  friends  of  mine  on  the 
other  side  to  come  over  and  sample  these  pleasing  develop- 
ments of  Western  civilisation  and  to  address  those  who 
rejoice  in  them  on  the  glories  of  Socialism,  the  propaganda 
of  which  has  likewise  come  since  my  day.  It  is  doubtless 
a  delightful  prospect  for  a  man  of  close  on  seventy,  if  he 
would  only  believe  it;  but 

"  Doppelt  suss  labt  nach  den  Kampf,  die  Huh," 

and  I  think  I  am  pretty  well  off  where  I  am.  I  am  not 
quite  sure  yet,  however. 

In  the  following  pages  I  have  done  my  best  to  give  a 
lively  account  of  an  active  and  varied  life.  I  have  also 
sketched  with  a  light  hand  some  of  the  famous  personages 
I  have  known  more  or  less  intimately.  As  I  have  written, 
their  faces,  forms,  and  voices  have  come  again  around  me, 
and  I  have  found  it  difficult  to  believe,  as  I  saw  and  heard 
them,  that  I  was  in  truth  but  communing  in  imagination 
with  the  dead.  It  is  a  very  jolly  company  I  hope  to  meet 
each  New  Year's  Day  on  the  Paris  Boulevards,  to  buy  toys 
in  memory  of  childhood  at  the  little  barracques  ranged  along 
the  kerb,  when  in  turn  I  join  the  majority  whose  work  is 
done. 

The  growth  of  Socialism  I  have  naturally  dealt  with 
more  seriously.  All  can  now  see  that  we  are  approaching 
the  greatest  social  transformation  in  human  history.  How 
the  tremendous  change  will  be  brought  about  is  far  more 
than  any  of  us  can  say.  But  I  am  glad  that  as  part  of  the 
vast  evolution  towards  a  better  period  I  have  done  my 
little  share  in  hastening  on  the  realization  of  a  nobler  life 
for  mankind.  What  I  said  in  my  speech  to  the  greatest 
meeting  ever  held  in  -Hyde  Park,  a  quarter  of  a  century 
ago,  I  can  joyfully  repeat,  as  an  old  man,  to-day:  "So 


viii  PREFACE  TO  THE  AMERICAN  EDITION 

when  we,  the  small  men  of  our  time,  pass  unregarded  to 
the  rest  of  the  tomb,  this  holy  consolation  shall  close  our 
eyelids  in  their  never-ending  sleep:  that  though  our  names 
may  be  forgotten  our  memory  will  ever  be  green  in  the 
work  that  we  have  done  and  the  eternal  justice  we  have 
striven  for." 

H.  M.  H. 
LONDON,  July  1911. 


CONTENTS 


EARLY  YEARS 


CHAPTER  I 


PAGE 
1 


ITALY 


CHAPTER  H 


24 


HOME  INCIDENTS 


CHAPTER  IH 


46 


MAZZINI 


CHAPTER  IV 


52 


GEORGE  MEREDITH 


CHAPTER  V 


65 


VICTORIA 


CHAPTER  VI 


85 


NEW  SOUTH  WALES 


CHAPTER  VH 


.    105 


CHAPTER  VIII 

POLYNESIA 114 

ix 


X  CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  IX 

PAGE 

JOURNALISM 139 

CHAPTER  X 
INDIA 153 

CHAPTER  XI 
NOTES  IN  AMERICA 166 

CHAPTER  XII 
AMERICAN  NOTES 171 

CHAPTER  XIII 
VARIOUS  EXPERIENCES 188 

CHAPTER  XIV 
DISRAELI 208 

CHAPTER  XV 
START  OF  SOCIAL  DEMOCRACY 226 

CHAPTER  XVI 
KARL  MARX 246 

CHAPTER  XVII 
SOCIALIST  AGITATION 266 

CHAPTER  XVIII 
GROWTH  OF  THE  MOVEMENT  .    278 


CONTENTS  xi 

CHAPTER  XIX 

PAOB 

CLEMENCEAU 288 

CHAPTER  XX 
ECONOMICS  AND  JOURNALISM 303 

CHAPTER  XXI 
WILLIAM  MORRIS 319 

CHAPTER  XXII 
PROPAGANDA  AND  PERSONALITIES 337 

CHAPTER  XXIII 
A  SALON  AND  ITS  SURROUNDINGS 346 

CHAPTER  XXIV 
THE  WEST  END  RIOTS 367 

CHAPTER  XXV 
RANDOLPH  CHURCHILL 374 

CHAPTER  XXVI 
SWIMMING  AGAINST  THE  STREAM 382 

CHAPTER  XXVII 

WlLHELM    LlEBKNECHT    AND    JEAN   JAURES 388 

CHAPTER  XXVIII 
THE  INTERNATIONAL  CONGRESS  OF  1889 404 

INDEX    .        .  ,    409 


V 

.•   x 


CHAPTER  I 

EARLY  YEARS 

THERE  is  every  reason  to  believe  I  was  born  at  7  Hyde 
Park  Square  on  the  7th  of  March  1842,  though  birth, 
being  the  most  important  incident  in  the  life  of  men,  is  pre- 
cisely that  which  none  of  them  can  remember,  and  I  am, 
of  course,  no  exception  to  the  rule.  I  passed  the  house  this 
year,  just  two  full  generations  later,  and  it  is  the  same  alike 
in  position  and  the  character  of  its  surroundings  that  it 
was  then:  there  is  no  beauty  or  poetry  about  a  birthplace 
in  a  London  Square,  and  nobody  can  take  the  least  satis- 
faction out  of  such  an  abode  where  he  first  saw  the  light. 

My  father,  John  Beckles  Hyndman,  was  an  Eton  and 
Trinity  Cambridge  man,  at  which  college,  being  then  pos- 
sessed of  a  very  large  income,  he  was  a  Fellow-Commoner. 
After  taking  his  degree  and  having  eaten  his  dinners  at  the 
Inner  Temple  he  was  duly  qualified  to  exercise  the  legal 
profession  and  was  called  to  the  Bar.  So  far  as  I  know  he 
never  had  or  tried  to  obtain  a  brief,  but  none  the  less  he  was 
entitled  to  call  himself  Barrister-at-Law,  and  remained  a 
member  of  that  highly-respectable  and  rigid  Trade  Union 
until  the  day  of  his  death.  He  was,  I  have  been  told,  popular 
at  College  and  in  the  world,  as  men  of  good  means  and  good 
temper  generally  are,  and  laid  up  for  himself  treasure  in 
Heaven  by  benefactions  of  which  I,  his  eldest  son,  can 
scarcely  in  honesty  say  that  I  approve.  My  mother,  Caroline 
Seyliard  Mayers,  was  a  good  mathematician,  a  good  classical 
scholar,  and  generally  a  woman  of  great  ability  and  accom- 
plishments, numbering  the  well-known  Mary  Somerville 


2      TEE  RECORD  OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

among  her  intimate  friends.  In  those  days  really  well- 
educated  women  were  rarer  than  they  are  to-day. 

I  don't  think  there  is  any  doubt  that,  going  farther  back, 
I  come,  like  most  well-to-do  people  of  the  upper  middle  class 
in  this  island,  from  a  decent  piratical  stock.  My  forbears, 
whose  name  was  Hyndeman,  which  means  the  headman 
of  the  hynde  or  hundred,  lived  in  the  North  Country  for 
many  generations.  They  landed  there  as  freebooters  and 
homicides,  and  remained  as  farmers  and  raiders.  When 
they  got  too  thick  upon  the  ground  some  of  these  Hynde- 
mans  of  the  Border  thought  it  was  high  time  to  follow  the 
example  of  their  ancestors,  and  taking  ship  after  the  manner 
of  their  ancient  progenitors  they  proceeded  to  remove  from 
active  life  people  in  an  adjacent  island,  whose  farms  and 
freeholds  formed  thereafter  a  convenient  property  for  them- 
selves. This  was  the  honourable  origin  of  the  family  known 
locally  as  "the  Hyndmans  of  Ulster,"  a  set  of  English  ma- 
rauders of  that  title  having  settled  in  the  north  of  Ireland  in 
the  reign  of  James  I.,  to  the  discomfort  of  the  native  stock, 
whom  the  newcomers  evidently  regarded  as  mere  interlopers. 

I  know  little  or  nothing  of  the  history  of  these  worthies 
myself.  But  my  dear  old  friend  Michael  Davitt  —  what 
would  the  Hyndmans  of  old  time  have  said  of  such  friend- 
ship ?  —  used  laughingly  to  declare  that  they  were  beyond 
question  Rapparees,  which,  I  am  told,  constitutes  in  Ireland 
scarcely  a  claim  to  distinction,  at  any  rate  among  Celts  and 
Catholics.  Coming  nearer  to  our  own  time  I  can  state, 
with  some  legitimate  satisfaction,  that  my  great-grandfather 
took  an  active  part  in  the  unfortunately  unsuccessful  Prot- 
estant insurrection  of  1798;  which  came  to  a  bad  end  be- 
cause Irishmen  of  diverse  creeds,  I  understand,  were  unable 
to  keep  their  fingers  off  one  another's  throats  until  they  had 
left  themselves  a  fair  field  for  the  settlement  of  their  cherished 
differences  by  jointly  expelling  the  common  enemy.  At  any 
rate,  my  great-grandfather,  having  handsomely  avoided  a 


EARLY  YEARS  3 

more  elevated  destiny,  died  comfortably  in  his  bed,  as  all 
good  revolutionists  should,  at  the  reasonable  age  of  eighty- 
five. 

My  grandfather  inherited,  apparently,  the  roaming  and 
appropriating  spirit  of  the  original  marauders  of  his  race. 
Leaving  Ulster  early  in  life,  he  had  an  exceedingly  ad- 
venturous career,  which  ended  in  his  accumulating  a  very 
large  fortune.  That  this  fortune  must  have  been  exceptional 
in  magnitude  I  judge  from  the  fact  that  I  find  people  still 
coming  back  from  the  West  Indies,  where  he  gained  his 
wealth,  rejoicing  in  the  euphonious  patronymics  of  Hynd- 
man- Jones,  Hyndman-Brown,  and  Hyndman-Robinson,  a 
tribute  to  my  grandfather's  eminence  in  expropriation, 
and  conveyance  to  his  own  use,  which  I  fully  appreciate. 
As  at  one  period  of  his  life  he  was  so  sore  put  to  it  for  ways 
and  means  of  providing  nourishment  that  he  was  compelled 
to  play  the  violin  in  public-houses,  in  order  to  keep  body  and 
soul  together,  his  later  success  in  turning  the  labours  of  his 
negroes  so  considerably  to  his  advantage  must  obviously 
have  been  the  reward  of  quite  unusual  merit.  It  is,  I 
venture  to  think,  unfortunate  for  me,  his  grandson,  that  I 
have  not  inherited  his  faculty  for  rapid  accumulation. 

There  is  a  story  told  of  this  respected  Hyndman,  who 
died  in  all  the  odour  of  wealth  and  its  concomitant  sanctity, 
which  must  ensure  to  him  the  regard  and  esteem  of  all  high- 
toned  money-getters.  He  was  always  kept  well  informed 
on  matters  which  concerned  his  own  individual  advantage 
or  afforded  him  the  prospect  of  great  gains;  from  which  I 
judge  that  he  was  a  bold  and  successful  speculator  who  un- 
derstood the  art  of  remuneration  and  bribery.  Very  early 
news  was  brought  to  him  that  under  the  Treaty  of  Peace 
with  Great  Britain  the  Dutch  were  to  surrender  to  this 
country  part  of  Guiana,  now  known  as  Demerara  or  British 
Guiana;  that  also  the  Dutch  planters,  fearing  that  they 
would  be  deprived  of  their  properties,  were  eager  to  sell  at 


4      THE  RECORD  OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

ridiculously  low  prices  for  cash,  in  order  to  save  something 
out  of  the  wreck  of  their  fortunes.  My  grandfather  at  once 
saw  his  opportunity  and  proceeded  to  take  advantage  of  it. 

He  went  to  his  agents  and  bankers  and  asked  for  an  im- 
mediate loan  of  £100,000  in  cash.  This  was  a  very  heavy 
demand,  even  in  those  days  of  ready  money  business  in  rich 
Colonies.  The  men  of  means,  therefore,  naturally  demurred. 
"  You  are  a  very  rich  man,  Mr.  Hyndman,"  they  said  — 
his  fiddling  days  were  then  over  —  "but  this  is  a  very 
solemn  sum  of  money  you  call  upon  us  for,  and  we  do  not 
see  our  way  to  letting  you  have  it.  What  do  you  want  it 
for?"  "That  last,"  he  answered,  "I  cannot  tell  you,  but 
it  is  all  going  into  the  hold  of  my  schooner  which  is  lying 
out  there  as  you  see."  This  frightened  them  more  still, 
and  hardened  their  hearts  and  tightened  their  money-bags. 
But  the  borrower  was  even  more  persistent  and  obstinate. 
"Very  well,  gentlemen,  if  that  is  your  decision  I  shall  be 
obliged  to  transfer  my  agency  and  account  to  your  rivals 
Messrs.  So  &  So,  and  they  will  let  me  have  the  advance  at 
once."  At  last  he  got  his  £100,000  on  loan,  placed  it  safely 
in  the  hold  of  his  schooner,  and  sailed  for  Guiana,  having 
possibly  promised  the  accommodating  lenders  a  share  of  his 
booty  if  realised. 

Arriving  in  Guiana,  with  this  large  sum  at  his  disposal 
and  in  the  very  nick  of  time,  he  bought  most  of  the  fine 
plantations  in  the  Colony,  slaves  and  all,  at  rubbish  prices, 
but  to  the  infinite  satisfaction  of  the  Dutch  vendors,  who 
congratulated  themselves  upon  having  thus  saved  a  per- 
centage of  their  hard-earned  fortunes  from  the  nefarious  grip 
of  the  conquering  British  Government.  My  grandfather  was 
equally  pleased  with  the  transaction,  which  promised  him 
at  that  time  an  income  of  at  least  fifty  per  cent  on  his  in- 
vestment. Scarcely,  however,  had  the  deeds  been  signed, 
the  lands  transferred,  and  the  titles  registered,  than  official 
information  arrived  from  England  that  the  new  government 


EARLY  YEARS  5 

would  under  no  circumstances  interfere  with  the  rights  of 
private  property;  that  the  Dutch  settlers  would  be  left  in 
undisturbed  possession  of  their  lands;  and  that  the  Dutch 
laws  of  inheritance  and  succession  would  be  fully  main- 
tained. Thereupon  the  Dutch  planters  were  as  keen  to 
repurchase  the  newly-acquired  Hyndman  estates  as  they 
had  been  just  before  to  dispose  of  them  at  any  sacrifice. 

My  grandfather,  it  is  said,  met  their  legitimate  desires  in 
the  whole-souled  spirit  of  the  successful  man  of  affairs. 
He  struck,  that  is  to  say,  a  fair  average  between  the  utmost 
they  were  prepared  to  give  and  the  least  he  was  prepared 
to  take :  the  balance  naturally  inclining  to  the  former  alter- 
native. Thus  it  came  about  that  he  returned  again  to  his 
own  plantations  with  more  than  cent  per  cent  profit  on  the 
transaction  in  cash,  and  still  possessing  two  of  the  best 
properties  in  the  Colony,  the  last  section  of  which  I  myself 
sold  as  my  father's  administrator.  As  to  my  grandfather, 
he  kept  open  house  for  many  years  on  the  proceeds  of  this 
and  other  able  strokes  in  the  organisation  of  industry:  the 
ordinary  profits  of  his  plantations  being  steadily  forth- 
coming on  a  large  scale  from  the  beneficial  toil  of  his  well- 
nourished  negroes.  And  here  I  may  add  that,  bad  as  chattel 
slavery  is  from  every  point  of  view,  the  big  plantations  were 
not  by  any  means  bad  places  for  the  negroes  in  the  times  of 
my  grandfather.  They  enjoyed  a  good  standard  of  life, 
they  were  fairly  educated,  and  they  were  not  allowed  by 
law  to  work  more  than  forty-five  hours  a  week.  If  I  had 
my  choice  of  being  a  negro  slave  on  a  well-kept  estate  in 
the  West  Indies,  or  a  sweated  free  white  wage-earner  in 
one  of  our  great  cities  for  the  whole  of  my  life  I  know  very 
well  which  lot  I  should  prefer.  It  is  interesting  to  compare 
the  Blue  Books  dealing  with  the  child  slavery  of  the  Man- 
chester Liberationist  manufacturers  in  their  cotton  mills 
with  the  official  records  of  the  lives  of  the  children  and  old 
people  on  my  grandfather's  plantations. 


6      THE  RECORD  OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

These  well-to-do  planters  were  a  free-handed  folk,  and 
tremendous  collectors  of  old  silver  to  decorate  their  tables 
at  their  great  banquets.  When  my  grandmother's  house 
was  burnt  down  at  St.  John's  Wood,  there  was  a  quantity 
of  this  plate  there,  and  the  cellars,  when  the  fire  was  over, 
were  richer  than  the  Potosi  Mine  with  melted  silver  bullion. 
Though  I  have  written  in  light  vein  about  my  grandfather, 
I  believe  he  was  really  a  very  good  fellow,  generous,  choleric, 
and  open-hearted,  with  a  financial  faculty  that  was  scarcely 
in  harmony  with  his  other  characteristics. 

My  father  himself  early  developed  a  turn  for  expenditure 
and  charity,  which,  I  regret  to  say,  was  not  accompanied 
by  a  similar  talent  for  acquisition.  He  had  neither  the 
initiative  and  ability  of  his  own  father  nor  the  revolutionary 
turn  of  the  man  of  ;98,  being,  in  fact,  I  believe,  a  member 
of  the  Conservative  Club,  and  a  supporter  of  the  Tory 
Party.  He  was  likewise  greatly  addicted  to  religion  which, 
like  heavy  port-wine  drinking,  was  quite  fashionable  in  his 
youth.  He  took  the  matter  seriously,  however,  and  was  a 
really  decent  Christian  and  Anglican  Churchman  of  the 
straitest  sect  of  the  Low  Church  variety,  now  forgotten  but 
then  known  as  Simeonites  from  their  head  the  Rev.  Mr. 
Simeon,  whose  successor  at  Cambridge  in  my  day  was  a 
puritanical  hot-gospeller  of  the  name  of  Clayton.  Being 
deeply  imbued  with  these  unattractive  doctrines  of  ascetic 
life  here,  as  necessary  to  avoid  a  ferocious  hell  hereafter, 
he  was  deeply  moved  by  the  death  of  his  only  and  much- 
loved  sister  Catherine,  though  fully  persuaded  that  she  had 
only  left  this  vale  of  tears  in  order  to  enter  upon  the  ex- 
quisite felicity  of  Paradise.  Partly  at  her  deathbed  request, 
therefore,  he  deemed  it  right  to  expend  a  very  large  sum, 
not  less  certainly  than  £150,000,  upon  building  and  en- 
dowing churches  to  her  memory,  the  incumbents  of  which 
were  always  to  be  Anglican  Low  Churchmen  as  Low  as  Low 
could  be.  Though  this  money  was  spent  for  so  pious  a  pur- 


EARLY  YEARS  7 

pose  that  it  would  be  unfilial  to  express  regret,  it  is  allow- 
able to  pity  the  successive  congregations  who  have  been 
compelled,  on  my  aunt's  account,  to  undergo  the  frequent 
penance  of  listening  for  seventy  years  to  Simeonite  sermons. 

I  have  only  once  tried  to  influence  the  appointment  by 
the  Hyndman  Trustees  to  any  of  these  livings.  This  was  in 
the  interest  of  a  very  worthy,  hard-working  curate  in  Kent, 
who  seemed  at  the  time  to  have  very  little  prospect  of  pre- 
ferment. The  Trustees  professed  themselves  to  be  exceed- 
ingly gratified,  in  the  first  instance,  that  the  eldest  son  of 
the  Founder  should  take  an  interest  in  their  choice.  But 
when  they  discovered  that  the  particular  clergyman  whom 
I  thought  qualified  to  undertake  the  duty  at  a  Church  and 
parish  in  one  of  the  poorest  parts  of  East  London  had  serious 
doubts  about  the  existence  of  a  gruesome  material  hell, 
where  severe  physical  torments  would  be  inflicted  on  the 
vile  bodies  of  all  who  had  erred  in  this  life,  they  decided 
with  absolute  unanimity  that  a  man  who  held  such  notions 
as  to  the  true  Christian  faith  was  quite  unsuited  to  a  cure 
of  souls  in  that  or  any  other  locality  which  came  within 
the  purview  of  their  Trust.  I  have  not  tried  since  to  obtain 
for  any  clerk  in  Holy  Orders  an  opportunity  of  deriving  a 
stipend  from  the  interest  of  my  father's  funds.  But  if  ever 
the  Church  of  England  should  be  disestablished  and  disen- 
dowed, I  hope  rather  than  believe  that  at  any  rate  a  per- 
centage of  the  values  realised  from  my  father's  benefactions 
will  pass  to  his  eldest  son. 

By  the  way,  how  are  we  to  account  for  the  religious  turn 
of  mind  or  the  contrary?  Is  heredity  or  environment  the 
more  determining  factor  in  the  tendency?  The  question 
baffles  me.  I  cannot  answer.  I  was  born  of  strictly 
religious  parents,  indeed  exceedingly  devout.  I  was  brought 
up  in  an  atmosphere  of  the  sincerest  devotion,  and  was 
surrounded  by  prayer  and  praise  to  God  and  His  Christ. 
Moreover,  I  believe  in  my  way  I  am  not  devoid  of  religious 


8      THE  RECORD  OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

feeling  of  a  kind.  Yet,  somehow,  even  my  mother,  who  was 
greatly  disturbed  at  this  peculiarity,  was  quite  unable  to 
get  me  to  pray,  and  from  then  till  now,  though  not,  I  hope, 
lacking  in  respect  towards  those  who  are  worthy  of  it,  I 
have  never  been  able  to  accept  the  view  that  appeals  to  a 
personal  deity  could  be  anything  more  than  a  personal 
gratification  of  individual  sentiment.  My  brothers  and 
sisters,  though  not  deficient  in  sagacity,  by  no  means  shared 
my  opinions  on  these  points.  They  were  true  believers  of 
a  very  ardent  type,  and  Conservatives  in  politics  as  well ; 
my  only  surviving  sister,  Mrs.  D'Albiac,  being  an  active 
Primrose  Dame.  I  had  therefore  a  majority  of  four  to  one 
against  me  in  my  own  family  from  my  youth  up.  What 
ancestor  I  threw  back  to  I  don't  know ;  but  I  imagine  some 
old  pagan  forbear  on  one  side  or  the  other  presided  at  my 
birth. 

Wordsworth  to  the  contrary  notwithstanding,  I  take  it 
that,  as  a  rule,  the  recollections  of  childhood  have  in  them 
very  little  that  savours  of  immortality.  At  any  rate,  my 
recollections  of  London  in  the  forties  are  confined  to  the 
gorgeous  carriages  and  equally  gorgeous  footmen  belonging 
to  some  City  magnate  who  lived  in  our  square,  the  ducks  I 
used  to  feed  in  the  Serpentine,  the  linkmen  with  their  great 
flambeaux  glaring  through  the  fogs  and  frightening  me 
with  I  know  not  what  imaginings  of  bogeys  to  come,  and, 
last  not  least,  the  glorious  display  of  toys,  all  of  which  I 
wanted  bought  for  me,  at  the  old  Soho  Bazaar,  then,  strange 
as  it  may  seem  to-day,  a  very  fashionable  resort.  I  remem- 
ber, too,  an  awesome  work  called  Bingley's  Useful  Know- 
ledge, to  which  I  was  told  to  go  in  search  of  truth  when  I 
sought  it,  but  which  led  me  to  the  shelf  above,  that  happily 
chanced  to  be  devoted  to  fiction.  I  recall,  too,  a  discussion 
which  gave  me  dreadful  dreams  as  to  some  aggressive  move 
of  the  Catholic  Church  in  England,  that  portended  the 
revival  of  the  burnings  alive  in  Smithfield ;  the  remarks  to 


EARLY  YEARS  9 

this  effect  which  I  took  in  earnest  being,  of  course,  made  in 
jest.  A  country  scene  is  impressed  more  strongly  on  my 
memory.  My  father  and  mother  then  had  Pendell  Court 
near  Bletchingley,  an  old  Elizabethan  house  with  a  moat 
round  it,  belonging  to  a  member  of  our  family.  I  believe 
there  were  ghosts,  but  I  neither  saw  nor  heard  anything  of 
them. 

One  cold  afternoon  in  1846,  however,  there  came  down 
the  drive,  leading  to  the  porch,  a  large  number  of  wretched- 
looking  people,  to  my  childish  eyes  quite  a  multitude. 
They  were  all  of  them  miserable  and  ragged,  and  as  they 
approached  nearer  to  the  house  I  was  taken  away  to  the 
back  entrance  and  round  to  the  nursery.  With  baby-like 
curiosity  I  wanted  to  see  these  strange  folk  again,  and  I 
managed  to  creep  down  into  the  hall  and  peer  at  them  from 
under  the  footmen's  legs.  By  this  time  they  were  standing 
in  a  semicircle  in  front  of  the  house,  and  were  passing  round 
from  hand  to  hand  the  platefuls  of  food  which  had  been 
sent  out  to  them.  They  ate  voraciously  and  seemed  almost 
fierce,  and  I  felt  afraid  when  I  looked  at  their  rough  faces  as 
they  stood  there,  sad  and  woebegone,  men  and  women  of  a 
new  species  to  me.  I  think  my  parents  were  a  little  uneasy 
too,  for  the  gardeners  and  grooms  on  the  place  were  all 
gathered  in  the  doorway  and  those  behind  had  sticks. 
After  these  people  had  eaten  and  drunk  all  that  was  to  be 
had  they  went  away  peacefully  enough,  their  rags  fluttering 
in  the  wind  behind  them.  It  all  made  a  great  impression 
upon  me,  and  I  dreamed  of  these  hungry  and  miserable 
tramps  for  long  afterwards.  They  formed,  in  fact,  the  main 
feature  of  my  favourite  nightmare  for  months.  That  was 
sixty-five  years  ago  and  Free  Trade  was  just  being  intro- 
duced as  a  remedy.  Times  were  often  bad  then.  Are  they 
much  better  now  ? 

When  I  was  six,  my  mother  having  died  at  a  very  early 
age,  to  the  deep  grief  of  all  her  family  old  and  young,  I 


10     THE  RECORD  OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

was  sent  from  home  to  the  school  of  a  clergyman  named 
Faithful,  whose  daughters  afterwards  played  an  active  part 
in  the  beginnings  of  the  woman's  movement,  at  Headley 
Rectory  on  the  Surrey  Hills,  about  three  miles  from  Leather- 
head.  I  don't  think  this  was  by  any  means  bad  for  me, 
and  I  am  quite  sure  it  was  a  very  good  thing  for  the  rest  of 
the  family.  When,  therefore,  I  hear  nonsense  talked  about 
the  hardship  of  removing  young  children  from  the  unhealthy 
slums  of  great  cities  to  decent  homes  on  the  countryside, 
and  the  monstrous  interference  this  would  be  with  proper 
parental  responsibility,  I  think  of  my  own  case  and  similar 
cases  in  well-to-do  households,  and  as  an  active  man  of  sixty- 
nine  wonder  how  much  I  have  suffered  from  this  removal 
from  home  life.  But  the  next  step  taken  was  not  so  wise. 
My  name  had  been  down  for  seven  years  at  Harrow  and  I 
ought  to  have  gone  there  after  my  so-called  dame-school 
period  was  over.  But  my  female  relations  had  somehow 
conceived  a  horror  of  public  schools  without  having  any 
fear  of  the  drawbacks  of  private  tutors.  So  I  went  through 
a  training  of  the  latter,  which  has  the  great  disadvantage  of 
leading  boys  to  think  themselves  men  before  they  have 
really  ceased  to  be  boys. 

Two  of  the  tutors  who  had  me  under  their  care  are  per- 
haps worth  notice.  The  first  gathered  under  his  roof  at 
Torquay  as  remarkable  a  set  of  lads  as  I  suppose  were  ever 
found  together  within  so  small  a  number.  There  were  never 
more  than  twelve  or  fifteen  pupils  during  the  two  years  and 
a  half  I  was  there,  yet  these  comprised  the  present  Lord 
Rayleigh;  E.  N.  Buxton,  one  of  the  first  Chairmen  of  the 
London  School  Board  ;  Chester  Macnaghten,  for  many  years 
head  of  the  Rajkumar  College  Rajkote  Kathiawar,  who 
successfully  trained  in  cricket  and  other  departments  Ran- 
jitsinjhi  and  numerous  young  Indian  princes;  a  distin- 
guished General  who  gained  a  peerage ;  three  cricketers  who 
were  afterwards  in  the  Cambridge  University  Eleven;  two 


EARLY  YEARS  11 

more  who  played  for  many  years  for  their  respective  coun- 
ties; Hamar  Bass  of  "Sceptre"  fame;  and  a  Chilian  named 
Abbott,  who  passed  first  in  and  first  out  of  1'Ecole  Centrale 
and  TEcole  Normale  at  Paris.  I  doubt  if  such  a  remarkable 
collection  of  young  people  was  ever  before  found  in  so  small 
a  school.  Nothing  of  the  kind  has  occurred  before  or  since 
at  the  same  place. 

On  leaving  Torquay  I  found  myself  with  a  clergyman  at 
Stockport,  who  himself  was  addicted  to  whisky  but  who 
had  a  charming  family.  I  was  a  pretty  good  cricketer  in 
those  days,  and  before  I  knew  that  this  was  scarcely  a  method 
of  improving  my  knowledge  of  mathematics  I  found  myself 
playing  in  the  first  eleven  of  the  Manchester  Club,  and 
going  about  the  country  with  the  men  of  the  team  to  the 
various  matches,  quite  on  my  own  account.  This  was  in 
1858,  when  the  famous  Ernest  Jones  stood  as  a  candidate 
for  Manchester  against  the  two  great  representatives  of 
capitalism,  Milner  Gibson  and  John  Bright.  Jones  was 
well  beaten  by  working-class  votes,  in  spite  of  the  apparently 
overwhelming  enthusiasm  of  the  people  in  his  favour.  I 
remember  hearing  knots  of  workmen  cursing  the  Free 
Traders  for  their  treachery,  and  their  own  class  for  their 
folly,  when  they  saw  the  Chartist  leader  and  Socialist  writer 
and  orator  at  the  bottom  of  the  poll.  I  had  then  no  grasp 
at  all  of  the  real  issues  at  stake  and  could  not  understand 
their  bitterness ;  though  assuredly  Stockport  was  a  town  in 
those  days  which  ought  to  have  impressed  upon  my  mind 
the  horrors  of  working-class  existence.  The  conditions  are 
not  much  better  now,  as  I  saw  when  I  was  there,  for  the 
first  time  for  fifty-two  years,  a  few  months  ago.  Plus  $a 
change,  plus  c'est  la  meme  chose! 

And  writing  now  so  long  afterwards  with  understanding 
of  what  was  then  going  on,  I  must  record  my  tribute  of 
sincere  admiration  and  respect  for  that  noble  band  of 
Chartist  agitators  who  worked  so  hard  and  to  all  appear- 


12      THE  RECORD  OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

ance  so  fruitlessly  on  behalf  of  the  emancipation  of  the  toilers 
from  the  tyranny  of  capital  and  the  misery  of  wage-slavery. 
Not  even  yet  is  their  great  work  understood  or  the  merit  of 
their  self-sacrifice  recognised.  In  days  to  come,  however,  I 
venture  to  predict  Jones  and  O'Brien,  Harney  and  Vincent, 
Stephens  and  Ball  will  be  regarded  with  sympathy  and  even 
adoration  as  the  pioneers  of  the  new  period  who  were  born 
before  their  time.  Had  the  workers  of  Great  Britain  fol- 
lowed the  lead  of  these  men,  instead  of  giving  ear  to  the 
fraudulent  phrases  of  the  profit-mongers  and  political  hacks 
of  the  dominant  class,  the  condition  of  the  mass  of  the 
English  people  would  be  very  different  indeed  from  what  it 
is  to-day. 

From  the  smoke  and  dirt  of  Stockport  to  wandering  alone 
up  the  valley  of  the  Rhine  and  making  solitary  excursions 
through  the  beautiful  country,  then  wholly  unspoiled  by 
factories,  mining  and  the  great  industry  generally,  was  a 
delightful  change ;  and  while  staying  with  an  uncle,  a 
Colonel  who  went  yearly  to  Wiesbaden,  I  heard  the  talk  of 
the  Austrian  and  Prussian  officers  from  the  double  garrison 
then  quartered  at  Mayence,  and  thus  learnt  a  good  deal, 
apart  from  the  language,  which  was  useful  to  me  long  after- 
wards. I  would  gladly  have  remained  and  enjoyed  myself 
in  that  glorious  Rhine  country;  but  there  was  the  univer- 
sity career  to  be  thought  of,  and  luckily  I  was  not  my  own 
master,  though  I  at  times  pretended  to  myself  I  was. 

And  so  I  went  off,  on  my  return  home,  to  another  and 
last  tutor  whose  memory  I  have  always  cherished  with  regret 
and  affection.  This  was  the  Reverend  Alexander  Thurtell, 
Rector  of  Oxburgh  Rectory  in  Norfolk.  His  early  career 
had  been  a  very  difficult  one.  He  had  fought  his  way  up 
to  Cambridge  against  many  drawbacks  and  disadvantages, 
when  a  blow  fell  upon  him  that  would  have  crushed  a 
weaker  man.  The  murder  of  Mr.  William  Weare  is  still 
remembered  as  one  of  the  most  cold-blooded  crimes  ever 


EARLY  YEARS  13 

committed  in  this  country.  It  stirred  the  whole  country 
with  horror  from  end  to  end,  and  the  name  of  the  murderer 
was  as  widely  execrated  as  that  of  Burke  or  Hare.  This 
name  was  Thurtell,  and  the  criminal  was  my  old  tutor's 
own  brother.  The  prejudice  aroused  was  terrible.  The 
young  student  just  going  up  to  Caius  College,  Cambridge, 
was  seriously  advised  even  by  his  own  family  to  change  his 
name,  and  to  this  no  objection  would  have  been  raised. 
He  refused  to  do  this,  and  unfortunately  suffered  a  great 
deal  both  openly  and  secretly  in  consequence.  He  worked 
the  harder  for  the  prejudice,  read  hard  and  steadily,  over- 
came the  difficulties  which  he  encountered,  took  his  degree 
as  third  wrangler  in  quite  an  exceptionally  good  year, 
became  fellow  and  tutor  of  his  college,  was  universally 
esteemed  in  that  and  other  positions,  and  going  down  to  a 
satisfactory  Caius  living  became  as  good  a  parson  as  was  to 
be  found  in  the  county;  maintaining  at  the  same  time 
most  friendly  relations  with  the  Catholic  priest  who  had  a 
little  flock  in  the  village,  the  old  Catholic  family  of  Beding- 
field  being  its  leaders. 

I  have  always  regarded  the  two  years  and  a  half  I  spent 
at  Oxburgh  as  the  most  useful  portion  of  my  educational 
life,  for  though  I  rode  to  hounds  and  played  cricket,  I 
worked  at  mathematics  most  assiduously  and  read  hard  in 
other  directions  too.  My  fellow  pupils  there  were  the  present 
General  Sir  Frederick  Maurice,  so  well  known  for  his  writings 
on  strategy,  and  Edward  Abbott  of  Salonica,  who,  poor 
fellow,  was  battered  to  pieces  by  the  Turks  with  iron  staves 
torn  from  palings  at  the  beginning  of  the  Turco-Servian 
War.  Cigarette  smoking,  now  so  popular,  was  then  almost 
unknown,  and  Abbott,  who  always  smoked  the  finest  Turkish 
tobacco  which  he  rolled  up  into  cigarettes  for  himself,  was 
the  first  devotee  of  this  habit  I  encountered. 

Norfolk,  it  is  needless  to  say,  was  and  is  a  sporting  county, 
and  the  race  of  fox-hunting  parsons  had  not  then  died  out. 


14  THE  RECORD   OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

Thurtell  did  not  ride  to  hounds,  but  he  was  a  very  good 
shot  and  was  on  excellent  terms  with  all  the  strict  game- 
preserving  landowners  and  squires  in  the  neighbourhood, 
who  not  unfrequently  came  to  dine  with  him.  It  was  on 
one  of  these  occasions  that  a  very  dramatic  and  amusing 
incident  befell.  The  old  gentleman  had  two  splendid  cats 
of  exceptional  size  and  beauty,  one  black  and  the  other 
white,  which  went  by  the  name  of  "Gown"  and  "Surplice." 
During  dinner  a  guest  had  been  reproaching  the  rector  for 
the  depredations  which  he  accused  these  favourite  cats  of 
making  upon  the  game.  The  imputation  was  stoutly  re- 
pudiated by  their  owner,  when  to  his  horror  and  confusion, 
but  to  the  irrepressible  laughter  of  his  friends,  "Surplice" 
carefully  deposited  a  fine  hen  pheasant  at  the  window. 
Those  two  handsome  marauders  fell  victims  to  gamekeepers 
shortly  thereafter.  Thurtell  could  scarcely  complain  after 
this. 

There  were  two  stories  of  an  old  parson  of  the  great  sport- 
ing period  which  Thurtell  was  very  fond  of  telling,  and 
which  return  to  me  now.  They  related  to  a  Rev.  Mr.  Hewitt 
who  held  a  fat  college  living  —  there  were  fat  college  livings 
in  those  days  —  near  Cambridge.  Mr.  Hewitt  was  devoted 
to  sport  of  all  kinds,  and  his  assiduity  in  this  respect  led 
him  to  take  a  very  easy  view  of  his  cure  of  souls.  His  flock 
was  well  supplied  at  need  with  port  wine  and  other  spiritu- 
ous aids  to  physical  regeneration,  but  spiritual  consolation 
both  in  and  out  of  church  was  a  little  hard  to  come  by. 
One  Sunday,  so  the  tale  went,  a  friend  of  his  came  from 
Cambridge  to  attend  service  in  the  morning  and  called 
upon  Hewitt  intending  to  go  with  him  to  church.  It  was  a 
very  cold  winter  day  and  the  snow  lay  thick  upon  the 
ground.  To  his  astonishment  and  horror  he  found  Hewitt 
in  his  study  arrayed  in  his  surplice,  a  white  night-cap  on  his 
head,  engaged  in  carefully  chalking  the  barrel  of  his  gun. 
"Why,  Mr.  Hewitt,"  he  said,  "what  are  you  doing?  It  is 


EARLY  YEARS  15 

just  eleven  o'clock  and  the  people  will  all  be  in  church.  We 
must  start  at  once."  "My  dear  fellow/7  was  the  reply, 
"there  will  be  no  service  this  morning.  In  such  cold  weather 
as  this  my  parishioners  will  be  far  more  comfortable  by 
their  own  firesides  than  sitting  in  that  draughty  church. 
I  myself  intend  to  worship  the  Creator  in  the  midst  of  His 

*    works,  and  by  the  help  of  the  Lord  I  shall  shoot  a  few 

\ducks!" 

The  result  of  this  neglect  of  his  duties  and  addiction  to 
sport  was  that  the  irreligious  condition  of  the  parish  be- 
came a  bye-word  in  the  district,  and  one  of  the  young 
Fellows  of  Caius,  who  felt  he  "had  a  call,"  persuaded  Mr. 
Hewitt  to  allow  him  to  bring  the  light  and  warmth  of 
Christian  truth  to  bear  upon  the  people.  This  he  did  for 
some  time  with  earnestness  and  success.  The  parishioners 
became  devout  and  attentive,  the  women  and  children  were 
visited  and  taught,  the  church  was  filled  each  Sunday  with 
a  reverent  and  attentive  congregation.  One  of  Mr.  Hewitt's 
friends  congratulated  the  old  rector  upon  this  change,  and 
said  something  in  praise  of  the  zealous  clergyman  who  had 
brought  it  all  about.  "Yes,  sir,"  said  Hewitt,  "he  is  no 
doubt  a  most  praiseworthy  young  man,  and  the  best  of  it 
is  he  does  it  all  free,  gratis,  for  nothing.  They  tell  me  the 
parish  church  is  crowded  to  hear  his  sermons.  All  the  tag- 
rag  and  bobtail  of  the  place  collected  there.  But  happily  I 
can  always  abate  the  nuisance  by  taking  the  duty  myself." 
There  is  another  old  yarn  which  is  worth  telling  as  giving 
at  any  rate  the  impression  of  what  was  supposed  to  be  the 
character  of  the  various  grades  of  the  Anglican  clergy  in 
those  days.  A  new  Bishop  was  appointed  to  the  See  of 
Norwich  who  wished  to  make  acquaintance  with  all  the 
clergy  in  his  diocese  at  their  respective  homes.  He  was 
an  active  man  physically  and  intellectually,  who  took  broad 
views  of  life,  which  latter  trait  was  just  as  well  for  his  general 
comfort.  Coming  to  one  well-known  village  without  notice 


16  THE   RECORD  OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

he  put  up  his  carriage  and  horses  at  the  inn  and  went  off 
on  foot  to  call  upon  the  rector.  In  answer  to  his  ring  a 
respectable  footman  made  his  appearance,  and  on  being 
asked  if  his  master  was  at  home  replied  he  was  not.  To 
further  inquiry  as  to  when  he  would  return  the  servant 
answered  that  he  was  quite  unable  to  guess.  "His  reverence 
went  out  with  the  foxhounds  early  this  morning,  and  it  was 
quite  impossible  to  say  when  he  might  get  home."  "Very 
well,  I  am  sorry  not  to  have  seen  him.  Please  say  the 
Bishop  of  Norwich  called.  Can  you  direct  me  to  the  curate's 
house?"  The  required  directions  were  given,  and  the 
Bishop  trotted  off  to  a  well-kept  cottage  of  large  size,  the 
door  of  which  was  opened  by  a  smart  maid.  "Can  I  see 
the  curate  of  the  parish?"  "I'm  afraid  not,  sir;  he  went 
off  to  hunt  with  the  pack  of  harriers  about  an  hour  ago, 
and  he  said  he  wouldn't  be  back  till  late."  The  Bishop 
again  left  his  name,  and  inquired  his  way  to  the  sexton's, 
where  he  might  get  the  keys  of  the  church,  which  he  wished 
to  see.  Having  learnt  this  the  Bishop  went  his  way  and 
found  the  sexton's  wife  seated  at  her  door  knitting.  "Where 
is  your  husband,  the  sexton,  my  good  lady.  I  want  him  to 
bring  the  keys  of  the  church  with  him  and  show  me  round." 

"I'm  very  sorry,  your  reverence,  but  he  is  not  at  home, 
and  he  took  the  church  keys  with  him  when  he  went  out, 
as  he  means  to  come  back  that  way  when  he  has  finished  a 
bit  of  ratting."  And  the  Bishop  returned  to  lunch  in  the 
inn. 

This  Bishop,  by  the  way,  was  of  a  very  different  char- 
acter from  one  of  his  brethren  of  an  earlier  date  who  sat 
on  the  episcopal  throne  of  Ely.  He  was  remarkable  for  the 
unblushing  manner  in  which  he  contrived  to  secure  all  the 
best  livings  in  the  diocese  for  his  sons  and  sons-in-law. 
These  near  relatives  were  persons  of  low  and  disorderly  life, 
quite  unbeseeming  to  their  station  as  rectors  of  parishes 
and  clerks  in  Holy  Orders.  The  thing  became  a  terrible 


EARLY  YEARS  17 

scandal,  which  was  not  lessened  when  a  brilliant  preacher 
in  the  great  Cathedral  took  for  his  text,  before  a  full  con- 
gregation, the  words,  "Now  the  sons  of  Eli  were  sons  of 
Belial/'  and  proceeded  to  enlarge  upon  the  drawbacks  of 
improper  behaviour  on  the  part  of  the  relations  of  high- 
placed  men  of  God,  and  the  evil  example  such  conduct  set 
to  the  people  in  general.  The  which  if  not  true  is  well 
invented. 

I  worked  hard  at  mathematics  at  Oxburgh,  and,  when  I 
left  to  go  up  to  Trinity,  Mr.  Thurtell  thought  I  was  quite 
safe  to  take  a  very  high  degree,  saying  I  could  then  be  in 
the  first  ten  wranglers  and  ought  to  be  safe  to  get  into  the 
first  three.  I  saw  him  a  few  years  later,  and  he  kindly  told 
me  it  was  the  disappointment  of  his  life  that  I  didn't.  As 
a  matter  of  fact,  I  read  everything  but  what  I  ought  to  have 
read  at  Cambridge,  and  gave  up  too  much  time  to  amuse- 
ment of  various  kinds  during  the  whole  of  my  University 
life.  Those  three  or  four  years,  whatever  you  may  do 
with  them,  leave  a  profound  impression  on  the  mind.  They 
are  long  remembered,  and  the  events  of  that  time  are  so 
keenly  felt  that  even  the  smallest  incidents  can  be  brought 
back  to  mind.  Thus  I  remember,  as  if  it  were  yesterday, 
my  tutor,  poor  W.  G.  Clark,  who  ended  his  life  by  walking 
himself  to  death  up  and  down  the  platform  of  York  Station, 
comparing  the  ghost  of  Clytemnaestra,  hovering  round 
Orestes  at  the  altar,  in  the  Eumenides,  to  the  ghost  of  Ban- 
quo  rising  at  the  table  to  confront  Macbeth ;  as  well  as  a 
little  contretemps  when  one  of  the  mathematical  lecturers 
actually  forgot  the  demonstration  of  the  mathematical 
problem  he  was  illustrating  to  his  class  on  the  blackboard. 
So  great  is  the  influence  of  their  University  career  upon 
some  men  that  they  are  always  harking  back  to  those  three 
or  four  years  as  if  that  period  alone  were  supremely  im- 
portant. This  sometimes  takes  a  silly  shape;  but  there  is 
no  escaping  from  the  fact,  and  I  confess  to  feeling  some- 


18  THE   RECORD  OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

thing  of  the  same  sentiment  myself,  though,  as  said  above, 
I  took  but  little  advantage  of  the  opportunities  afforded  me, 
and  have  always  regarded  my  college  career  as  the  complete 
failure  it  really  was. 

It  is  very  odd,  and  I  don't  pretend  to  account  for  it  at 
all.  I  have  myself  led  a  very  active  and  adventurous  life. 
I  have  had  my  turns  of  popularity  and  success  as  well  as 
my  periods  of  the  most  harassing  worry  and  disappointment 
conceivable  —  enough  one  would  think  to  obliterate  finally 
matters  of  passing  interest  from  nineteen  to  twenty-two. 
Yet  having  been  in  the  " sixteen"  at  Cambridge  and  playing 
for  years  in  the  Sussex  County  team  I  declare  that  I  feel 
at  this  moment,  fifty  years  later,  my  not  playing  for  Cam- 
bridge against  Oxford  in  the  University  Cricket  Match  as  a 
far  more  unpleasant  and  depressing  experience  than  in- 
finitely more  important  failures  have  been  to  me  since. 
Nay,  when  but  the  other  day  I  heard  that  two  famous 
cricketers  of  that  time,  chatting  over  the  men  of  our  year 
at  a  Club,  both  declared  that  I  ought  to  have  been  in  the 
eleven  in  my  first  year  and  every  year  thereafter  I  felt 
quite  a  little  glow  of  satisfaction.  Very  funny  that,  I  con- 
sider. It  shows  how  seriously  one  may  take  quite  useless 
games  in  this  country,  and  how  our  whole  educational  sys- 
tem gives  far  too  much  importance  to  such  matters.  I 
remember  hearing  my  father,  who  was  an  Eton  boy  himself, 
say,  "The  captain  of  the  boats  at  Eton  is  next  to  the  King," 
and  at  the  Universities  the  President  of  the  University  Boat 
Club  and  the  Captain  of  the  Eleven  were  quite  on  a  level 
with  the  Senior  Wrangler  and  the  Senior  Classic  of  the  year. 
It  is  very  absurd  when  you  come  to  think  of  it.  But  so  it 
was  in  my  day,  and  so  it  appears  to  me  it  is  now. 

I  was  very  unlucky,  like  all  men  of  my  time,  in  never 
seeing  the  Cambridge  University  boat  row  first  past  the 
winning  post  for  eleven  years  —  from  1861  to  1872,  that  is 
to  say.  I  have  no  doubt  myself  that  the  character  of  the 


EARLY  YEARS  19 

two  rivers  used  for  training  made  all  the  difference,  as  the 
boats  got  lighter  and  lighter,  and  I  do  not  believe  any 
change  for  the  better  would  have  taken  place  but  for  the 
transfer  of  the  practice  first  to  the  stretch  of  water  below 
Ely  and  afterwards  to  the  Thames,  coupled  with  the  ad- 
mirable coaching  of  George  Morrison,  himself  a  famous 
Oxford  oar.  In  my  first  year  as  an  undergraduate  I  was 
walking  down  the  bank  with  my  old  friend,  John  Chambers, 
who  had  been  captain  of  the  boats  at  Eton  and  was  after- 
wards captain  of  the  University  Boat  Club.  The  Univer- 
sity boat  rowed  by.  It  looked  very  pretty  indeed,  and  to 
my  untutored  eye  seemed  a  very  good  boat.  "Is  that  a 
good  boat?"  I  asked.  "Yes,"  said  Chambers,  "it  is  not  a 
bad  boat."  "Has  it  any  chance  against  Oxford?"  I  went 
on.  "Not  a  ghost  of  a  chance,"  replied  Chambers.  "Why 
not?"  "Because  they  have  no  stroke."  "But  can't  they 
make  a  stroke?"  inquired  I  in  my  innocence.  "No,"  was 
the  answer,  "I  have  often  heard  of  a  stroke  making  a  boat 

x  but  I'm  damned  if  I  ever  heard  of  a  boat  making  a  stroke." 
How  many  times  I  have  quoted  that  simple  saying  against 

\the  empty-headed  fools  of  democracy  who  imagine,  or  pre- 
tend, that  because  men  should  be  socially  equal  therefore 
leadership  and  initiative  and  in  a  sense  authority  become 
unnecessary.  Show  me  the  stroke  and,  other  things  being 
equal,  I  can  judge  of  the  boat. 

As  I  have  begun  also  to  talk  about  cricket,  I  cannot 
leave  the  subject  without  a  word  or  two.  It  is  the  fashion 
nowadays  to  say  that  the  play  is  much  better  than  it  used 
to  be.  I  am  not  so  sure  about  that.  As  to  the  grounds, 
there  is  no  comparison,  and  the  "boundary"  for  hard 
through  hits  saves  the  batsman  greatly  as  compared  with 
running  them  out.  Otherwise,  I  see  no  great  improvement, 
while  certainly  batsmen  play  more  at  the  pitch  and  less  at 
the  ball.  Consequently,  I  observe  that  when  there  comes 
a  little  continuous  bad  weather  and  the  ground  at  all  ap- 


20  THE  RECORD  OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

proximates  to  the  sort  of  wicket  we  used  often  to  have  even 
in  County  Matches,  the  scores,  good  pitch  and  all,  are  then 
no  longer  than  they  were  forty  or  fifty  years  ago;  while 
nothing  like  the  same  risks  are  taken,  as  a  rule,  in  order  to 
finish  the  game  out  one  way  or  the  other.  The  only  two 
men  I  ever  saw  who  played  almost  equally  well  on  bad 
grounds  and  on  good  were  Runjeetsinji  and  W.  G.  Grace. 
The  former  was  a  genius :  the  latter  had  worked  up  batting 
to  an  exact  science.  The  first  time  I  had  the  misfortune  to 
play  against  "W.  G."  he  was  only  a  lad  of  eighteen.  The 
match  was  the  Gentlemen  of  Sussex  against  the  Gentlemen 
of  Gloucestershire.  Grace  went  in  first  and  took  the  first 
ball  which  I  bowled.  He  scooped  a  gentle  catch  into  Harry 
Brand's  mouth  at  mid-off.  Brand  let  it  trickle  down  his 
chest  and  stomach  comfortably  to  the  ground.  "W.  G." 
made  276  thereafter.  Years  later  Brand,  then  Lord  Hamp- 
den,  came  to  see  me  on  an  important  matter  of  business. 
No  sooner  did  his  eye  light  upon  me  (he  did  not  know  he 
was  going  to  meet  me)  than  he  walked  up  to  me  and  said, 
"Have  you  ever  forgotten  that  catch  I  dropped  off  you 
from  'W.  G.'?"  I  never  had.  We  laughed  then:  we 
didn't  laugh  at  the  time. 

As  to  bowling,  that  is  certainly  straighter  on  the  whole 
than  it  used  to  be,  though  I  think  Alfred  Shaw  would  have 
held  his  own,  even  on  that  point,  with  any  of  the  men  of 
to-day,  and  the  straightness  is  partly  to  be  attributed  to 
the  raising  of  the  arm  in  delivering  the  ball  wrell  above  the 
level  of  the  shoulder.  But  the  greatest  bowler  I  ever  saw 
or  batted  to  was  of  the  long  ago  —  a  drunken  old  chap 
named  William  Buttress  at  Cambridge.  He  would  now  be 
called,  in  the  slang  of  the  day,  a  bowler  of  "googlies."  But 
he  could  do  what  he  liked  with  the  ball  and  he  bowled  at 
batsmen's  weak  points  to  an  extent  and  with  a  precision  I 
never  saw  equalled.  The  spin  he  put  on  was  amazing. 
At  the  end  of  the  match  the  ball  itself  was  all  cut  about 


' 


EARLY  YEARS  21 

with  the  imprints  of  his  nails.  In  fact  he  was  the  only  really 
scientific  bowler  I  have  ever  known.  I  remember  in  one 
match  the  captain  of  the  University  Eleven,  one  " Peter" 
Bagge,  was  in.  It  was  almost  impossible  to  get  him  out  on 
a  slow  wicket  and  he  was  a  hard  hitter  too.  Buttress  tried 
every  possible  device  to  induce  Bagge  to  let  go.  Nothing 
would  tempt  him  and  he  had  scored  over  sixty  runs.  On  a 
sudden  Buttress  threw  up  his  hands  and  cried  "that's  got 
him."  Sure  enough,  Bagge  could  not  resist  having  a  try 
for  a  big  hit  and  was  caught  at  deep  square  leg.  He  bowled 
for  that  catch  as  other  men  bowled  for  a  wicket.  The  diffi- 
culty was  to  keep  Buttress  sober.  The  United  All  England 
Eleven  contrived  to  do  so  in  one  match  at  Lord's  against 
the  All  England  Eleven,  for  the  first  day,  and  he  actually 
bowled  Hayward,  Daft,  and  George  Parr,  the  three  greatest 
batsmen  of  their  time,  out  in  one  over.  For  the  next  forty- 
eight  hours  he  was  in  a  state  of  hopeless  imbecility.  Buttress 
was  a  genius,  and  I  wonder  nobody  has  ever  studied  and 
practised  his  methods.  I  was  a  member  of  the  Marylebone 
Club  for  more  than  thirty  years  and  I  never  saw  any  bowler 
try  to  do  so. 

I  was  at  Trinity  in  the  same  year  as  the  late  King  and  I 
knew  several  of  his  intimate  friends  very  well.  -Nobody 
thought  him  brilliant,  though  he  did  say  that  "at  the  time 
when  it  comes  to  my  turn  to  be  King  of  England  thrones 
will  be  going  by  competitive  examination."  He  was  re- 
garded as  a  good-natured  common-sense  man,  rather  strictly 
looked  after,  who  wished  to  enjoy  life  and  didn't  like  losing 
at  games.  That  he  would  become  a  popular  and  dexterous 
monarch  none  imagined.  Among  my  own  intimate  friends 
and  acquaintances  at  Trinity  I  numbered  several  who  have 
since  distinguished  themselves  and  three  or  four  who  have 
reached  the  top  of  the  tree  in  their  professions.  Only  one 
of  them,  however,  Lord  Rayleigh,  has  made  any  important 
additions  to  the  knowledge  of  mankind,  has  materially 


22  THE  RECORD  OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

helped  on  the  progress  of  the  race,  or  will  be  remembered 
after  his  death.  His  undoubted  success  in  science,  however, 
was  not  due  to  his  University  training. 

Close  friendships  made  at  this  tune  of  life  are  very  en- 
during. No  matter  how  widely  men  may  differ  afterwards 
and  how  far  apart  their  careers  may  lie  the  remembrance 
of  intimacy  in  those  early  years  always  binds  them  together. 
That  has  certainly  been  the  case  with  me.  One  of  my 
brothers  having  been  at  Magdalen  College,  Oxford,  and  my 
other  brother  at  St.  John's,  I  knew  Oxford  almost  as  well 
as  I  knew  Cambridge,  and  my  close  friends  of  those  years 
are  my  close  friends  now.  I  doubt  indeed  whether  anyone 
ever  makes  very  intimate  friendships  after  the  age  of  twenty- 
five.  There  is  so  very  much  unknown  on  both  sides  later 
and  character  has  formed. 

When  I  had  taken  my  degree  I  came  to  London,  had 
rooms  in  Bury  Street,  was  an  original  member,  and  on  the 
Committee,  of  the  New  University  Club,  ate  my  dinners  at 
the  Temple  —  digestion  at  that  tune  rendering  examination 
unnecessary  —  and  read  for  the  Bar  in  Chambers,  playing 
cricket  in  the  summer  and  whist  and  billiards  in  the  winter. 
My  legal  training,  in  consequence,  was  as  imperfect  as  my 
University  career  had  been  useless.  The  famous  Judah  P. 
Benjamin,  whom  I  knew  well,  and  listened  to  in  three  great 
arbitration  cases,  told  me  if  I  would  seriously  follow  my 
profession  I  should  certainly  attain  to  the  front  rank.  I 
was  quite  ready  to  believe  him;  for  genial  appreciation,  is 
always  grateful,  even  when  it  takes  the  shape  of  good- 
natured  flattery.  But  I  disliked  the  idea  of  battering  out 
my  brains  over  disputes  about  other  people's  property,  I 
took  little  interest  in  whether  criminals  of  varying  degrees 
of  turpitude  were  condemned  or  acquitted,  and  the  atmos- 
phere of  the  Courts  was  as  unwholesome  to  me  physically 
as  legal  shop  was  unpleasant  to  me  mentally.  In  fact,  I 
was  lazy,  and  as  I  had  just  sufficient  income  to  render  hard 


EARLY  YEARS  23 

work  at  what  I  didn't  like  unnecessary,  I  was  content  to 
follow  my  bent  of  the  time.  I  am  now  paying  for  my  dis- 
inclination to  drudgery  as  a  young  man  by  doing  a  porten- 
tous amount  of  work  for  nothing  as  an  old  one. 

The  late  Canon  Heavyside  of  Norwich  was  a  most  pleas- 
ing conversationalist  and  ban  vivant.  Dining  one  evening 
with  my  guardian  at  Taverham  his  attention  was  directed 
at  the  close  of  dinner  to  some  very  fine  old  Madeira  which 
had  been  buffeted  round  the  Cape  and  back  again  in  the 
days  of  long  ago.  He  took  a  glass  of  it  and  appreciated  the 
merit  of  that  delicious  but  gouty  wine.  He  was  pressed  to 
take  another.  He  sighed  and  said,  "No,  the  end  of  dinner, 
as  Paley  truly  says,  is  like  the  end  of  life,  one  always  thinks 
one  might  have  done  better."  I  don't  myself  believe  Paley 
ever  said  anything  of  the  sort.  But  I  suppose  we  all  of  us 
feel  as  we  get  towards  seventy  that  there  are  many  regret- 
table things  we  have  done  in  the  past  which  —  we  should 
much  like  to  do  again.  That  is  exactly  my  case.  At  any 
rate  I  had  what  Boccaccio  calls  a  good  time  (e  con  ella  aveva 
buon  tempo):  there  is  always  the  eternal  feminine  some- 
where about.  But  my  memory  of  this  period  lingers  not 
at  all  around  women  but  takes  me  to  Lord's,  at  the  wicket, 
out  in  the  field  or  on  the  top  of  the  pavilion,  and  recalls 
many  a  pleasing  incident  and  enjoyable  acquaintance  all 
over  England.  I  feel  sad  as  I  think  how  many  of  my  friends 
and  companions  of  that  day  have  already  passed  away. 


CHAPTER  II 
ITALY 

EARLY  in  1866 1  decided  I  had  had  enough  of  London  and 
England  and  I  would  travel  through  Italy  and  make 
myself  thoroughly  acquainted  with  the  country  and  the  lan- 
guage. I  had  no  special  object  in  view  beyond  wishing  to 
enjoy  myself  in  an  intelligent  manner,  yet  in  a  way  this  trip 
was  the  turning-point  in  my  life.  I  had  done  nothing  and 
was  doing  nothing,  though,  even  so,  my  time  had  not  been 
altogether  wasted.  I  knew  Gibbon  nearly  by  heart  and  was 
well  read  in  previous  Roman  history.  The  annals  of  the 
Eternal  City  in  her  Papal  period  were  fresh  in  my  mind  and 
I  had  studied  the  development  of  the  Italian  Republics, 
with  their  strange  commingling  of  art  and  homicide,  prob- 
ably more  closely  than  most  educated  young  Englishmen. 
Consequently,  when,  having  sailed  from  Marseilles  to  Leg- 
horn, I  landed  hi  Italy  I  was  not  wholly  unprepared  to  take 
advantage  of  my  tour. 

Florence,  then  the  capital  of  Italy,  was  the  first  stage  in 
my  travels  and  I  passed  a  most  pleasant  time  there  with  a 
very  clever  and  cultivated  young  American  banker,  Charles 
Morgan  of  New  York,  whose  perfect  knowledge  of  Italian 
and  thorough  acquaintance  with  the  beautiful  city  rendered 
my  stay  there  one  continuous  delight.  The  effect  which 
a  first  visit  to  Florence  must  produce  upon  any  intelligent 
young  man  I  need  not  speak  of.  But  when  I  got  to  Rome 
in  January  1866  after  a  journey  carefully  escorted  by  Italian 
troops  —  for  there  were  many  brigands  in  those  days  —  in 
the  banquette  of  a  clumsy  rumbling  old  diligence  at  one 

24 


ITALY  25 

o'clock  in  the  morning  I  found  myself  back  in  the  medieval 
epoch,  though  I  took  up  my  quarters  at  the  then  modern 
Hotel  d' Angle terre  in  the  Via  Bocca  di  Leone. 

Pius  IX.  was  then  Pope-King,  Cardinal  Antonelli  was  the 
Pope-King's  Mayor  of  the  Palace.  Princes  of  the  Church 
and  Princes  of  the  great  families,  in  gorgeous  equipages  and 
striking  apparel,  monks  with  variously  coloured  hoods,  the 
noble  guard  of  resplendent  magnincos  arrayed  in  glorious 
uniforms,  pervaded  the  streets,  little  French  red-pantalooned 
soldiers  stood  sentry  at  every  street  corner,  Macdonald  the 
sculptor  had  just  been  stabbed  going  up  to  his  studio  in 
the  Via  Babuino,  and  to  go  to  the  Coliseum  by  moonlight 
without  a  strong  guard  was  a  wanton  sacrifice  either  of 
your  ears  or  your  nose  or  a  great  part  of  your  fortune.  All 
this  was  quite  commonplace  and  uninteresting  to  the  Roman 
population  in  those  easy-going  days  of  miscellaneous  laissez- 
faire.  But  the  discovery  of  the  great  gilded  statue  of  Nep- 
tune, now  in  the  Vatican,  stirred  the  whole  population  to 
excitement  and  appreciation.  Every  detail  lent  attraction 
to  the  entire  social  picture.  Rome  and  the  Romans  con- 
stituted the  civilised  world  within:  the  rest  of  mankind 
were  the  barbarians  without.  Antonelli,  whose  own  brother 
was  a  brigand,  was,  all  said,  triumphantly  holding  his  own 
against  the  sacrilegious  machinations  of  the  godless  Pie- 
montesi,  Cardinal  Illustrissimo's  coachman  had  put  a  knife 
into  his  stableman  to  the  latter's  final  separation  from  this 
life,  and  his  master  had  sent  for  the  survivor  and  remon- 
strated with  him  so  angrily  on  this  awkward  occurrence  that 
the  poor  fellow  actually  cried.  A  good  coachman  was  hard 
to  come  by :  stablemen  were  plentiful  in  those  days.  Such 
was  the  sort  of  gossip  we  heard  on  all  hands. 

To  look  on  at  it  all  as  a  visitor  was  to  gain  a  new  con- 
ception of  life.  Even  the  great  pictures  and  sculptures,  the 
remains  and  the  ruins  of  Rome's  ancient  magnificence,  were 
scarcely  more  interesting  and  attractive  than  to  live  in  this 


26  THE   RECORD  OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

active  past  which  it  was  difficult  to  believe  could  possibly 
be  the  present.  Marion  Crawford,  who  knew  it  so  well, 
gives  a  brilliant  description  of  this  little  world  which  has 
passed  away  in  the  opening  chapters  of  Saracinesca.  The 
city  could  not  be  recognised  as  the  Rome  of  to-day.  Between 
the  great  main  artery  of  the  Corso  and  other  portions  of  the 
Rome  of  that  time  were  labyrinths  innumerable,  and  I 
thought  I  had  done  wonders  when  I  had  mastered  their 
intricacies  sufficiently  to  be  able  to  go  direct  and  without 
losing  myself  from  the  Piazza  di  Spagna  to  the  Tiber.  I 
can  well  understand  that  those  who  lived  in  and  loved 
Rome  before  1870  never  cease  to  regret  the  disappearance 
of  the  picturesque  though  antiquated  and  ill-governed 
metropolis  of  the  Papal  States.  There  was  doubtless  much 
that  needed  reform  and  much  that  was  downright  harmful ; 
but  it  is  questionable  whether  the  bulk  of  the  inhabitants 
were  not  really  better  off  in  their  ignorance  and  superstition 
than  they  are  now  in  their  enlightenment  and  knowledge. 
I  was  in  no  danger  of  missing  the  contrast  between  the  old 
and  the  new,  the  outworn  and  the  modern ;  for  my  principal 
companion  during  my  stay  was  a  very  clever  Frenchman 
several  years  older  than  myself,  who  used  to  amuse  himself 
and  me  by  his  caustic  remarks  on  what  we  saw.  We  were 
waiting  in  Easter  week  for  the  coming  of  some  wonderful 
sacrosanct  procession  with  its  variegated  cohort  of  monks, 
and  its  coming  was  unduly  delayed  —  "Voila,"  said  he, 
himself  being  a  careful  observer  of  all  Catholic  rites,  "Voila 
comme  on  passe  la  Semaine  Sainte.  On  attend  to u jours  une 
betise  qui  ne  vient  pas." 

On  the  other  hand,  I  encountered  everywhere  unmis- 
takable evidences  of  the  most  genuine  and  touching  belief. 
The  Coliseum  was  then  a  ruin  indeed,  with  here  and  there 
plants  and  creepers  growing  in  unchecked  confusion  inside 
and  out.  It  was  none  too  safe  to  clamber  up  the  crumbling 
stairways  in  order  to  find  a  seat  high  up  on  a  broken  arch. 


ITALY  27 

Below,  the  arena  showed  up  as  one  great  oval  of  bright 
green  turf  amid  the  grey  of  the  vast  building,  with  the 
Stations  of  the  Cross  placed  at  intervals  around.  Seated 
thus  one  afternoon,  thinking  of  Gibbon's  inspiration  from 
the  same  spot,  and  its  results  in  the  greatest  history  that 
ever  was  written,  I  was  awakened  from  my  half-dream  by 
the  sound  of  voices  below,  and  looking  down  saw  a  crowd 
of  people  following  a  priest  who  led  them  round  from  Station 
to  Station,  delivering  a  short  and  apparently,  for  I  was  too 
high  up  to  hear  the  exact  words,  an  eloquent  and  impres- 
sive address  at  each.  When  he  reached  the  last  Station  he 
held  up  the  black  crucifix  which  had  hung  at  his  girdle,  as 
he  finished  his  remarks,  advancing  towards  the  people  while 
he  did  so.  They  one  and  all  bent  in  fervent  adoration  and 
some  knelt  down  upon  the  grass.  It  was  an  impressive 
scene  in  that  vast  place,  with  all  the  memories  of  the  great 
past  crowding  up  behind  the  preacher.  The  exposure  of  the 
underworks  of  the  ancient  arena  by  the  clearing  away  of 
the  superincumbent  grass  and  rubbish  may  have  added  to 
instruction ;  but  it  has  destroyed  the  beauty  of  the  interior 
of  the  Coliseum  and  the  Stations  of  the  Cross  have  long 
since  been  swept  away. 

Another  time  I  went  to  the  ceremonies  held  at  Easter  in 
St.  Peter's.  They  too  were  impressive,  in  a  very  different 
way,  and  their  effect  has  often  been  described.  I  went 
outside  when  they  were  over  and  was  one  of  the  crowd  who 
stood  awaiting  the  Pope's  benediction,  which  Pius  IX.  used 
to  deliver  from  the  balcony  of  the  great  Cathedral,  his  fine 
voice  sounding  through  the  Piazza.  At  the  close  of  this 
function  a  number  of  papers,  which  I  believe  are  called 
" Indulgences/'  were  distributed  from  above  and  wafted 
down  by  the  breeze  fell  among  the  people,  who  looked  for 
them  anxiously  and  grasped  them  eagerly  as  they  descended. 

A  pretty  young  Italian  peasant  girl  with  a  baby  in  her 
arms  stood  close  to  me,  as  deeply  desirous  of  securing  one 


28  THE   RECORD  OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

for  herself  or  her  infant  as  any  of  the  ruder  sex  present. 
By  every  right  of  religion  and  conviction  an  Indulgence 
should  have  come  to  this  pleasing  pair,  and  the  rustic 
madonna  would  have  returned  to  her  Trastevere  village  with 
the  certainty  of  a  happy  life  hereafter  to  follow  upon  a  life 
of  mingled  care  and  enjoyment  here.  But  alas  Providence, 
as  she  would  have  put  it,  the  accident  of  a  passing  gust,  as 
it  seemed  to  me,  wafted  the  longed-for  bulletin  of  eternal 
felicity  out  of  the  reach  of  my  pious  little  neighbour  with 
the  beautiful  eyes  and  the  swelling  bosom  and  deposited  it 
with  careful  solicitude  on  the  chest  of  the  foreign  heretic. 
Her  pained  look  of  regret  and  disappointment  I  can  see 
again  now.  Tears  came  into  her  eyes.  I  needed  the  In- 
dulgence, with  all  its  possibilities  of  pardon,  far  more  than 
she  did,  for  of  a  certainty  she  was  a  good  little  soul.  But, 
with  a  profound  sense  of  the  necessity  for  sacrifice,  my 
politeness  and  pity  overcame  my  passing  wish  to  have  an 
anchor  out  to  windward.  I  therefore  took  off  my  hat  and 
handed  my  very  own  indulgence  to  the  delighted  contadina. 
She  thanked  the  strange  signore  most  earnestly  and  there 
was  quite  a  little  scene  around  us  in  consequence.  I  should 
have  liked  to  bestow  upon  her  a  fraternal  kiss,  and  I  don't 
think  at  the  moment  she  would  have  refused  me  the  privilege. 
But  I  only  begged  her  to  pray  for  me,  and  I  verily  believe 
she  did. 

During  my  stay  in  Rome  and  afterwards  at  Naples,  Sor- 
rento, and  Castelamare  I  worked  hard  at  Italian,  going 
whenever  I  could  to  Italian  theatres  and  speaking  the 
language  not  only  to  my  masters  but  to  all  who  would  bear 
with  my  grammatical  mistakes  and  barbarian  accent.  It 
was  lucky  I  attained  the  proficiency  I  did.  For,  having  left 
Rome  and  Naples,  I  went  farther  afield  and  then,  after  a 
delicious  month  or  two  of  enjoyment  in  the  lovely  district 
of  Salerno,  Vietri,  and  Amalfi,  there  came  to  me,  in  my 
lotus-eating  Paradise,  the  news  that  war  was  certain  between 


ITALY  29 

Italy  and  Prussia  and  Austria.  I  therefore  abandoned  my 
agreeable  lethargy  and  went  forth  as  War  Correspondent  for 
the  then  recently-started  Pall  Mall  Gazette,  thus  beginning 
a  connection  with  that  journal  and  its  editor,  Frederick 
Greenwood,  which  extended  over  many  years  and  a  close 
friendship  with  the  latter  which  lasted  until  his  death.  My 
desire  to  see  and  record  something  of  the  war  was  the 
keener,  inasmuch  that  I  was  in  those  days  an  ardent  Italian- 
issimo  and  longed  for  the  day  when  Italy  would  suffice  for 
herself  and  the  foreign  rulers  would  be  driven  out. 

It  is  difficult  for  those  who  only  remember  Italy  as  she 
has  been  during  the  past  forty  years,  united,  free  and 
mistress  of  her  own  destinies,  to  comprehend  fully  the  en- 
thusiasm felt  by  nearly  all  educated  young  Englishmen  in 
those  days  for  Italy  in  her  efforts  for  emancipation :  an 
enthusiasm  which  broadened,  and  deepened  by  the  chivalrous 
exploits  of  Garibaldi,  the  unquenchable  fire  of  Mazzini  and 
the  sagacious  genius  of  Cavour,  affected  more  or  less  our 
whole  people.  Such  eminent  Radicals  as  Cowen,  Stansfeld, 
Peter  Taylor,  and  Boyd  Kinnear  came  under  the  direct 
influence  of  Mazzini  himself;  while  Cavour's  master-stroke 
in  the  Crimean  War  and  his  great  ability  alike  as  a  diplo- 
matist, as  an  organiser  and  as  an  administrator  conquered 
the  confidence  of  the  English  middle-class.  I  was,  there- 
fore, for  once  in  the  full  current  of  popular  feeling  as  I 
steamed  up  from  Naples  to  Genoa  on  board  a  Rubattino 
liner  with  some  two  thousand  soldiers  on  board;  who  had 
as  nearly  as  possible  capsized  us  all  in  the  Bay  at  starting, 
by  rushing  en  masse  from  one  side  of  the  vessel  to  the  other 
when  bidding  farewell  to  their  friends. 

Garibaldi  landed  at  Genoa  from  Caprera  on  the  night  of 
the  day  I  arrived,  and  I  saw  him  under  the  light  of  the 
torches,  in  the  stern  of  the  boat  which  brought  him  ashore, 
with  his  heavy  grey  poncho  over  his  shoulders  and  the  fa- 
miliar red  shirt  peeping  out  from  under  it.  I  had  last  seen 


30  THE   RECORD  OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

Garibaldi  cheered  and  welcomed  by  at  least  three  hundred 
thousand  people  as  he  was  driven  down  Whitehall  to  Staf- 
ford House  in  the  Duke  of  Sutherland's  carriage.  No  such 
spontaneous  and  enthusiastic  a  reception  has  been  given  by 
Londoners  to  any  foreigner  before  or  since.  It  was  a  purely 
personal  demonstration,  due  to  the  splendid,  unselfish 
courage  and  devotion  of  this  guerilla  leader  in  1859  and  1860 
as  well  as  to  the  remembrance  of  his  long  and  brilliant  life 
of  adventure  in  South  America  on  the  side  of  the  people. 
At  that  moment  a  wave  of  Republicanism  swept  through 
our  own  country.  Now  Garibaldi  came  from  his  humble 
home  in  the  island  of  Caprera  to  take  part  in  another  effort 
to  free  his  beloved  country  finally  from  the  Austrian  tyranny. 
It  was  a  dramatic  opening  to  what,  from  the  military  point 
of  view,  was  a  most  disappointing  and  unsuccessful  cam- 
paign. 

I  went  up  with  Garibaldi's  force  into  the  Tyrol.  At 
Desenzano  I  made  the  acquaintance  of  nearly  all  my  fellow- 
correspondents.  I  was  strolling  along  the  platform  to  find 
a  carriage  in  a  train  going  up  to  the  front,  when  I  heard  a 
voice  say  hi  English,  "  That's  he  —  you  may  depend  upon 
it,  that's  he,"  followed  by  the  invitation,  "Come  in  here." 
It  then  appeared  that  Sala  and  Henty,  Bullock-Hall  and 
Henry  Spicer,  who  made  up  the  party,  had  seen  hi  the 
papers  that  another  correspondent  was  coming  out  to  repre- 
sent the  Pall  Mall  Gazette,  and  they  judged  from  the  spruce- 
ness  of  my  apparel,  so  they  were  jokingly  pleased  to  say, 
that  I  must  be  the  representative  of  the  journal  referred  to. 
And  so  I  found  myself  following  the  fortunes  and  misfor- 
tunes of  the  Garibaldini,  amid  the  beautiful  scenery  at  the 
head  of  the  Lago  di  Garda.  And  here  my  lately-acquired 
knowledge  of  colloquial  Italian  soon  stood  me  in  good  stead. 

At  the  Rocca  d'  Anfo,  where  the  village  leading  to  the 
fortress  was  traversed  by  a  road  running  up  at  an  angle  of 
about  forty-five  degrees,  I  met  Sala,  who,  failing  to  get 


ITALY  31 

provisions  at  the  inn,  had  gone  out  to  forage  for  food.  He 
was  descending  the  hill  with  difficulty,  for  he  suffered  from 
varicose  veins,  bearing  in  one  hand  a  brown  paper  bag  and 
using  a  good  stout  stick  with  the  other.  ''  Well,"  I  asked, 
"what  have  you  got?"  "I  have  swept  the  place  of  macca- 
roons,"  he  answered,  "and  I  have  bought  some  chocolate 
drops,  which  are  very  sustaining."  Maccaroons  and  choco- 
late drops!  "Avadavats  and  Indian  crackers!"  Sala's 
face  and  general  appearance  were  not  at  all  in  concatenation 
accordingly  with  such  fare  as  this.  His  was  a  high-coloured 
rubicund  visage  with  one  exceedingly  bright,  jovial  eye,  the 
other  being  not  so  brilliant,  and  the  contour  of  his  body 
was  certainly  not  suggestive  of  a  light  supper  after  a  long 
day's  fast. 

What  was  to  be  done?  We  were  all  hungry.  The  Gari- 
baldians  had  no  rations  to  sell,  the  inn-keepers  could  give 
us  no  satisfaction  and  no  hope  of  better  things  soon,  as  no 
further  supplies  could  come  for  many  hours  and  the  even- 
ing was  closing  in.  We  heard  also  that  the  farmers  in  the 
neighbourhood  had  removed  everything  eatable  up  into  the 
mountains,  fearful  of  raids  on  their  flocks  and  fowls  by  their 
countrymen  of  the  army  of  liberation.  But  the  only  chance 
of  obtaining  a  meal  lay  in  this  direction,  so  I  started  out 
to  see  what  could  be  done,  with  Henty,  the  Hercules  of  the 
little  group,  accompanying  me  to  the  turn  of  the  road  lead- 
ing to  the  farm-houses  in  order  to  protect  me  from  pillage 
on  my  return,  should  I  buy  anything  worth  putting  our 
teeth  into,  for  "nostri  prodi"  were  hungry  too.  My  first 
two  visits  were  bootless.  All  the  knocking  and  shouting 
brought  forward  none  to  negotiate  with.  At  the  third  farm 
I  was  more  fortunate.  A  girl  opened  the  door  a  little  and 
I  quickly  put  my  foot  into  the  space.  After  a  few  words  of 
supplication  on  my  side  and  remonstrance  on  hers,  she  let 
me  in  and  I  saw  her  family  gathered  behind  her  in  the  room. 
My  appearance,  or  perhaps  the  sight  of  my  money,  con- 


32  THE  RECORD  OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

vinced  them  of  my  natural  honesty,  and  after  a  rather 
lengthened  bargaining,  carried  on  purely  for  form's  sake  on 
my  side,  I  returned  in  triumph  with  a  rough  sack  contain- 
ing quite  a  good  supply  of  very  decent  fowls,  a  lot  of  eggs, 
two  huge  rolls  of  bread,  and  other  matters  of  lesser  moment. 
Yes,  Italian  is  a  very  useful  language  when  out  campaign- 
ing in  an  Italian  country,  and  I  was  unanimously  appointed 
forager-in-chief  and  commissariat-provider-in-general  to  the 
correspondent  camp  —  a  position  not  wholly  devoid  of  draw- 
backs, however.  At  any  rate,  we  had  an  excellent  supper 
that  night  and,  having  persuaded  the  landlord  at  our  inn 
to  discover  some  really  delicious  wine  in  his  cellar,  which 
we  speedily  transferred  to  our  throats,  it  could  not  be  said 
that  our  first  visit  to  the  Rocca  d'  Anfo  was  devoid  of  hilarity 
at  the  finish.  We  served  Sala's  maccaroons  and  chocolates 
with  all  due  solemnity  as  an  entremet,  of  which,  be  it  said, 
Sala  himself  did  not  partake. 

If  you  want  to  see  war  do  not  follow  an  army  of  volun- 
teers. Garibaldi's  force  was  full  of  patriotism  and  courage, 
and  I  daresay  with  even  a  few  months  of  guerilla  training 
might  have  been  very  useful.  As  it  was,  it  fell  between 
two  stools.  It  was  too  large  for  rapid  movement  and  sudden 
attack,  and  it  was  too  ill-organised  for  regular  operations  on 
a  considerable  scale.  There  was  but  one  regiment  that 
could  in  any  sense  be  called  disciplined,  that  commanded 
by  the  General's  eldest  son  Menotti  Garibaldi,  in  which  my 
friend  Boyd  Kinnear  served  as  a  private.  As  I  look  back 
on  the  events  of  that  nominally  successful  advance  —  for 
the  Austrians  fell  back  fighting  continuously  as  we  went 
forward  —  I  am  astonished  that  Henty  and  Bullock-Hall 
and  I  —  Sala  could  not  stand  the  fatigue  of  walking  and 
went  back  to  Milan  —  returned  safe  and  sound  to  Italian 
soil. 

Bullock-Hall,  the  pacifist  of  the  Daily  News,  in  particular, 
at  the  fight  of  Monte  Suello,  ran  a  risk  which  even  a  braver 


ITALY  33 

man  might  have  shrunk  from.  Garibaldi  himself  was  present 
at  the  affair  and  was  badly  wounded  in  the  foot  when  lead- 
ing on  his  men.  The  fire  of  a  body  of  Kaiser-Jagers  was 
deadly,  and  many  of  the  Italian  officers  were  shot  down. 
Where  we  stood  the  rank  and  file  were  obviously  wavering. 
This  was  too  much  for  Bullock-Hall.  He  rushed  forward, 
caught  a  horse  belonging  to  one  of  the  officers  who  had 
fallen,  mounted  it,  and  revolver  in  hand  led  a  charge  him- 
self, the  volunteers,  to  do  them  justice,  rallying  quickly  to 
his  support.  Who  won  or  who  lost  I  did  not  then  know; 
but  Bullock  returned  hot  and  naturally  excited,  dismounted, 
and  then  wanted  to  go  to  the  front  again.  With  the  greatest 
difficulty  he  was  persuaded  to  retire  to  the  rear,  though  it 
was  pointed  out  to  him  that  as  a  civilian  and  non-combatant 
the  enemy  would  be  quite  justified  in  shooting  or  hanging 
him  out  of  hand  should  he  be  caught.  Bullock-Hall,  who, 
in  1871,  was  one  of  the  most  active  organisers  of  relief  in 
Paris,  inherited  his  uncle  General  Hall's  property  at  Six 
Mile  Bottom  and  became  quite  a  conservative  county  mag- 
nate. Land-owning  has  commonly  this  stolidifying  effect. 

There  may  be  something  exhilarating  and  inspiring  for 
the  actual  combatants  in  war:  there  is,  so  far  as  I  could 
detect,  nothing  but  what  is  horrible  for  the  looker-on  in 
such  conflict.  The  splendid  courage  and  coolness  displayed 
by  the  Piedmontese  artillery  and  by  some  of  the  Garibaldini 
could  not  compensate  for  the  frightful  appearance  of  the 
wounded  or  calm  the  feelings  aroused  by  their  groans. 
To  see  an  artillery-man  staggering  to  the  rear  with  one  of 
his  arms  blown  off,  the  hideous  injury  partly  dressed  by  a 
surgeon  or  fellow-bombardier,  to  watch  a  rocket  jumping 
about  unexpectedly  as  rockets  do,  and  landing  at  last  full 
in  the  chest  of  a  volunteer  with  horrible  results  —  though 
rockets  are  on  the  average  ineffective  missiles,  they  'are  very 
alarming  to  young  troops  ;  to  witness  two  or  three  soldiers, 
advancing  together,  all  blown  to  atoms  by  a  shell  from  a 


34  THE  RECORD  OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

fort :  these  are  ugly  sights  enough.  The  pomp  and  circum- 
stance of  glorious  war  have  no  place  in  this  sort  of  fighting, 
and  it  is  hard  to  rouse  any  enthusiasm  even  for  a  desper- 
ate and  successful  charge  when  such  sad  scenes  of  human 
butchery  are  going  on  all  round. 

But  all  this  was  as  nothing  to  the  hospital.  There  were 
some  800  or  1000  seriously  wounded  men  when  I  was  at 
Storo  after  the  so-called  battle  or  skirmish  of  Bezzecca.  A 
large  church  had  been  cleared  of  its  seats  and  converted 
into  the  chief  hospital,  the  wounded  being  laid  out  as  close 
as  possible,  on  the  straw  which  had  been  strewn  for  their 
accommodation.  There  were  no  proper  sanitary  arrange- 
ments whatever.  The  force  was  also  very  short  indeed  of 
doctors,  and  a  young  Russian  man  of  science  who  was  with 
us  as  correspondent,  Kovalevsky  by  name,  who  has  since 
achieved  a  great  reputation,  offered  his  services.  "I  have 
never  practised  dressing  on  the  living,"  he  said,  "but  under 
the  circumstances  I  may  be  useful.  Will  you  come  and 
help  me  ?  "  It  was  not  at  all  the  sort  of  job  I  liked,  especially 
as  typhoid  fever  was  rife  among  the  injured,  and  I  have  a 
perfect  horror  of  blood  and  broken  bones.  But  it  was 
necessary  I  should  put  pressure  on  myself  at  such  a  time, 
so  I  accompanied  Kovalevsky  on  his  mission. 

I  never  felt  so  ill  in  all  my  life  as  when  I  got  inside  and 
saw  what  was  going  on.  I  have  thought  ever  since  that  only 
the  very  highest  causes  could  justify  any  nation  or  govern- 
ment in  running  such  risks  of  the  mutilation  and  torture  of 
human  beings.  The  place  was  literally  like  a  charnel  house : 
the  lack  of  doctors  and  the  deficiency  of  appliances  occasion- 
ing scenes  of  horror  which  recalled,  as  Henty  said,  the  most 
terrible  events  of  the  Crimean  War.  What  made  things 
worse  in  a  way  for  me  was  the  fact  that  Kovalevsky,  in 
spite  of  all  his  modesty,  soon  showed  himself  to  be  the  most 
rapid  and  tender  and  skilful  dresser  in  the  place.  It  was 
wonderful,  as  I  carried  out  his  instructions,  to  note  the 


ITALY  35 

swift  and  sure  action  of  his  long  taper  fingers  as  he  applied 
the  bandages  and  carried  out  such  simple  operations  as  he 
felt  sure  would  benefit  the  sufferers.  So  skilful  was  he,  and 
so  manifestly  considerate  of  the  wounded,  that  the  poor 
fellows  whose  injuries  were  yet  undressed  cried  for  him  to 
come  and  attend  them. 

Thus  hour  after  hour  passed  and  I  am  bound  to  say  I 
felt  very  bad  indeed  and  like  to  faint.  But  I  determined  I 
wouldn't  give  in  as  long  as  Kovalevsky  stuck  to  his  work, 
which  was,  of  course,  far  more  trying  than  mine,  that  con- 
sisted only  in  holding  limbs  or  wounded  places  in  this  or 
that  position.  I  thought  he  must  break  down;  for  he 
was  not  physically  strong  and,  long  before  he  withdrew,  his 
face  was  deathly  pale  and  streams  of  perspiration  were 
pouring  down  his  forehead.  The  close  air  and  dreadful 
smell  were  of  themselves  sufficient  to  exhaust  him,  apart 
from  the  strain  on  his  nerves.  At  last  he  could  do  ho  more 
and  abandoned  his  work,  sad  as  it  was  to  hear  the  cries  of 
disappointment  from  the  men  whom  he  was  obliged  to 
leave  untended.  So  out  we  went.  The  moment  I  breathed 
the  fresh  air  coming  down  upon  us  from  the  mountains  I 
was  violently  sick.  Kovalevsky  was  not.  He  was,  however, 
quite  overcome  with  his  exertions,  and  what  with  this  and 
similar  visits  to  the  hospital  was  all  but  seriously  ill  before 
he  started  back  South. 

Ever  since,  when  I  have  heard  or  read  about  splendid 
feats  of  heroism  in  warfare,  as  during  the  Russo-Turkish, 
the  Franco-German,  and  the  Russo-Japanese  campaigns,  I 
have  thought  of  that  churchful  of  shattered  human  creatures 
at  Storo,  with  typhoid  fever  standing  grimly  by  to  reap  its 
harvest  of  death  from  those  who  were  recovering  from  their 
injuries,  and  I  have  felt  what  a  preposterous  state  of  civili- 
sation is  that  in  which  intelligent  human  beings  can  find  no 
better  way  of  settling  their  differences  than  that  which  I 
had  witnessed. 


36  THE   RECORD   OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

A  few  days  later  I  made  Garibaldi's  acquaintance.  He 
was  lying  on  a  sofa  in  the  big  room  of  the  village  inn  at 
Storo,  clad  in  the  familiar  red  shirt  and  grey  trousers,  with 
his  staff  around  him.  The  general  looked  pale  from  his 
wound  and  his  natural  anxiety  for  his  army,  none  too  well 
supplied  by  the  Government,  but  he  received  me,  as  in- 
variably he  did  all  Englishmen  —  he  had  two  among  his 
immediate  personal  followers  —  with  charming  courtesy  and 
warmth.  The  impression  which  he  produced  was  one  of 
the  most  unaffected  genuineness  and  frank  behaviour. 
Whatever  may  have  been  the  case  with  him  later,  Garibaldi 
was  at  this  time  wholly  unspoiled  by  success  and  flattery, 
and  was  inclined  to  belittle  rather  than  overrate  his  own 
achievements.  His  influence  over  the  men  with  him  was 
surprising :  it  was  not  due  to  his  ability  but  to  the  simplicity 
and  unselfishness  of  his  character  and  the  daring,  amount- 
ing at  times  to  sheer  recklessness,  writh  which  he  threw  him- 
self, as  at  Mentana,  into  hopeless  exploits.  Thenceforward 
to  the  end  of  the  campaign  he  was  unable  to  mount  a  horse 
and  drove  about  always  in  a  large  carriage. 

Of  all  the  men  of  that  period  Garibaldi's  personal  appear- 
ance is  perhaps  the  best  known ;  but  no  portrait  of  him  that 
I  have  ever  seen  gives  quite  the  expression  of  the  benevolent 
lion  that  his  face  in  repose  had  at  this  time.  It  has  always 
seemed  to  me  that  Garibaldi's  chief  exploit  was  not  the 
dashing  conquest  of  the  Sicilies,  in  which  he  would  certainly 
have  failed  but  for  the  support  given  him  by  Cavour,  nor 
even  his  brilliant  services  the  year  before  on  the  left  wing 
of  the  French  army,  in  the  campaign  of  1859 ;  but  his  really 
marvellous  efforts  during  the  siege  of  Rome,  when,  with  his 
brother  triumvirs  Mazzini  and  Saffi  he  held  that  city  for 
the  Republic  against  the  French  in  1848.  It  was  his  inde- 
fatigable resource  and  courage  on  this  occasion,  with  the 
heroic  retreat  he  organised,  when  the  national  rising  was 
beaten  down  by  overwhelming  numbers  and  superior  equip- 


ITALY  37 

ment,  that  came  to  my  mind  as  I  saw  the  wounded  leader 
on  his  couch  and  in  his  carriage,  and  the  remembrance 
obliterated  even  the  more  recent  achievements  of  "the 
thousand  of  Marsala." 

Garibaldi's  move  up  into  the  Tyrol  was,  of  course,  only 
a  trifling  though  picturesque  incident  in  the  great  cam- 
paign of  Prussia  and  Italy  against  Austria.  The  Prussians 
won  in  the  North,  partly  because  they  were  better  armed, 
but  chiefly  because  Marshal  Benedek  was  forced  to  adopt  a 
ruinous  strategy  by  silly  Court  orders  from  Vienna.  The 
Italians  lost  in  the  South  because  they  chose  the  worst 
possible  ground  for  their  first  great  battle,  and  because  they 
were  not  as  a  whole  at  all  a  match  for  the  Austrian  forces. 
But  for  the  Piedmontese  artillery,  also,  a  mere  handful  of 
Kaiser-Jagers  would  have  held  the  entire  Garibaldian  army 
in  check,  and,  but  for  the  victories  of  Koniggratz  and  Sa- 
dova,  the  Austrian  troops  would  have  been  back  in  Milan. 
It  is  natural  that  correspondents  with  an  army  should  take 
the  side  of  the  men  whom  they  see  daily  risking  life  and 
limb  for  their  cause;  but  talking  over  matters,  quietly, 
Henty  and  Brackenbury,  who  had  had  much  experience  of 
war,  and  I  who  had  had  none,  were  driven  to  the  conclusion 
that  such  affairs  as  those  of  Monte  Suello,  the  fort  of  Am- 
pola,  and  the  "battle77  of  Bezzecca  reflected  little  credit 
upon  the  volunteers ;  while  the  absurd  blunder  which,  after 
having  challenged  the  Austrian  army  on  its  own  familiar 
parade  ground,  so  piled  up  the  commissariat  and  ammunition 
wagons  on  the  only  accessible  road,  that  the  two  wings  of 
their  own  army  could  not  communicate  or  manoeuvre  with 
one  another,  thus  making  the  defeat  of  Custozza  much  more 
complete  than  it  need  have  been,  said  little  for  Italian 
generalship. 

However,  Italy  by  her  attack  had  diverted  a  considerable 
portion  of  the  Austrian  army  from  the  Prussian  side,  and 
in  spite  of  Sala7s  bitter  jest  to  Garibaldi's  secretary  Plan- 


38  THE   RECORD   OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

tulli,  "Votre  Government  doit  faire  une  bonne  petite  guerre 
centre  la  Turquie,"  she  obtained  her  reward  by  the  acquisi- 
tion of  Venice  when  peace  was  proclaimed.  The  interval  I 
spent  in  a  delightful  visit  to  Bologna,  Verona,  Vicenza, 
Pavia,  and  Padua,  and,  after  a  short  stay  in  Venice,  devoted 
the  rest  of  the  time,  before  the  entrance  of  the  troops  into 
that  city,  to  a  trip  with  Henty  by  way  of  Trieste  to  the 
grotto  of  Adelsberg  and  the  mercury  mines  of  Idria.  Trieste 
we  found  much  afflicted  by  a  virulent  form  of  cholera. 
People  were  dying  rather  uncomfortably  fast,  falling  down 
in  the  street,  in  fact,  as  if  smitten  by  the  plague,  and  suc- 
cumbing in  a  few  hours  to  the  attack.  There  was  therefore 
good  ground  for  apprehension,  and  the  Italians,  a  demon- 
strative people,  took  little  pains  to  conceal  their  dread  of 
the  pestilence.  In  fact,  the  atmosphere  of  the  whole  city 
at  this  time  was  decidedly  depressing  and  even  funereal. 
So,  though  our  hotel  was  excellently  managed  and  the  wine 
good,  we  thought  the  country  districts  would  be  pleasanter 
resorts  than  Trieste  for  two  foreigners  in  search  of  diver- 
sion. It  was  not  right  also,  we  felt,  that  we  two,  who  had 
escaped  by  a  miracle  from  being  tumbled  out  of  a  cart  over 
a  precipice  on  the  road  down  from  the  front  to  Brescia, 
should  try  fortune  and  risk  our  lives  too  hard  by  remaining 
unnecessarily  in  a  plague-stricken  city. 

I  shall  never  forget  the  alarm  displayed  on  our  arrival 
at  our  first  two  or  three  stopping-places  by  those  who  had 
got  there  before  us,  and  thought  we  had  brought  infection 
with  us.  Their  attitude  put  me  in  mind  of  the  behaviour 
of  the  country  people  to  the  refugees  from  the  Plague  of 
London.  They  shrank  from  us,  muttering  "II  cholera,  il 
cholera,"  and  disappeared  into  the  background  with  white 
faces  and  trembling  limbs.  We  only  recovered  our  full 
spirits  a  day  or  two  later  when,  after  an  excellent  dinner, 
we  found  ourselves  dancing  with  the  miners  and  their  women- 
kind  at  Idria,  who,  although  the  cholera  was  coming  swiftly 


ITALY  39 

towards  them  by  another  route,  thought,  as  we  did,  that 
the  best  way  to  make  head  against  the  epidemic  was  to  eat, 
drink,  and  be  merry.  We  did  all  three  much  to  our  satis- 
faction for  several  days  and  enjoyed  ourselves  mightily. 

By  what  right  do  "the  authorities"  stifle  men  and 
women  under  pretence  of  saving  other  people's  lives?  I 
asked  myself  this,  when  I  found  myself  with  a  number  of 
others  thrust  into  a  sort  of  Black  Hole  of  Calcutta  at  Udine. 
There  was  barely  room  for  us  to  breathe  to  start  with,  and 
then  some  disgusting  chemicals,  worse  in  odour  than  an 
arsenal  of  Chinese  stinkpots,  were  turned  in  upon  us.  It 
was  indeed  a  frightful  experience.  I  thought  my  latter  end 
was  not  only  approaching,  but  was  fully  come.  The  fumi- 
gation was  intolerable.  Nose,  eyes,  lungs,  ears,  all  suffered 
from  it.  We  were  suspected  of  cholera  and  were  therefore 
fair  game.  I  bore  my  martyrdom  with  reasonable  resigna- 
tion. Not  so  Henty.  Ordinarily  the  most  good-natured, 
buoyant-spirited,  and  long-suffering  man  that  ever  lived, 
so  much  so  that  he  was  known  in  the  Crimea  as  "Mark 
Tapley"  Henty,  there  was  some  malignant  essence  in  this 
abominable  stench  which  stirred  up  all  that  was  furious  in 
his  nature.  He  began  by  loud  but  unheeded  protest  and 
gradually  worked  himself  up  to  an  assault  upon  the  window- 
panes,  many  of  which  he  and  I,  bound  to  follow  his  lead  out 
of  sheer  comradeship,  speedily  shattered.  Air  came  through 
the  openings  but  gendarmes  through  the  door.  The  two 
"mad  Englishmen"  were  removed  in  custody,  after  some 
expostulation  and  movements  hi  various  senses.  Happily 
we  were  not  so  mad  but  that,  having  cleared  our  throats 
of  the  unspeakable  effluvium,  we  were  able  to  bethink  us 
of  wine  and  tips  and  the  mollifying  effect  of  both  upon  the 
most  austere  of  police  officers  in  that  latitude.  Thus  it 
came  about  that  we  were  allowed  to  re-enter  the  train  for 
Venice  with  our  batch  of  only  half-suffocated  fellow-travellers, 
who  benefited  by  Henty's  sudden  outburst  of  indignation. 


40  THE  RECORD   OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

At  Goritz,  just  before  this  little  comedy,  I  saw  another 
side  of  that  Austrian  occupation  of  Italy  which  I  was  de- 
nouncing as  an  outrage  upon  civilisation.  A  fine  regiment 
was  quartered  there,  returning  to  Vienna  from  Venice.  We 
dined  at  the  same  inn  at  which  the  officers  were  staying  and 
met  them  all  at  the  table.  They  were  most  courteous  and 
considerate  as,  in  my  not  inconsiderable  experience,  Aus- 
trian officers  almost  invariably  are.  The  conversation 
naturally  turned  upon  the  war  and  the  strange  fact  that, 
though  the  Italians  had  entirely  failed  to  beat  them,  they 
were  now  in  full  retreat.  They  one  and  all  expressed  the 
deepest  regret  that  they  had  not  had  a  turn  at  the  Prussians, 
and  it  was  from  them  I  first  learnt,  what  has  since  become 
a  matter  of  history,  that  Benedek  was  wholly  blameless  for 
the  Austrian  disasters  in  Bohemia,  though  they  felt  sure  he 
would  never  exonerate  himself  at  the  expense  of  the  Emperor. 
This  indeed  proved  to  be  the  case ;  for  Benedek,  who  lived  to 
an  advanced  age,  died  without  having  at  any  time  shown,  as 
he  easily  could  have  shown,  that  his  whole  plan  of  campaign 
in  1866  was  wrecked  by  orders  from  the  highest  quarters. 

In  the  course  of  conversation,  however,  I  congratulated 
the  Colonel  upon  the  fact  that  he  was  now  "going  home." 
"It  may  seem  strange  to  you,"  he  answered,  in  Italian,  not 
in  German,  "but  I  don't  feel  like  that  at  all.  I  have  been 
quartered  here  in  Italy  for  twenty  years.  I  have  grown  to 
love  the  country  and  the  people.  I  have  many  dear  friends 
here,  and  my  leave-taking  from  them  now  has  been  the 
saddest  event  in  my  life.  I  have  not  the  slightest  grudge 
against  the  Italians,  and  though  I  may  have  my  doubts  as 
to  their  capacity  for  self-government,  I  think  I  quite  under- 
stand, and  even  sympathise  with,  their  desire  to  get  rid  of 
us.  If  I  were  to  retire  from  my  profession  I  might  come 
back  and  spend  the  rest  of  my  days  in  Italy.  I  certainly 
have  the  desire  to  do  so  at  this  moment,  and  I  believe  all 
my  officers  are  of  the  same  opinion."  And  so  it  was.  All 


ITALY  41 

these  Austrian  officers,  who  spoke  Italian  perfectly,  gave  a 
somewhat  similar  view  of  their  departure.  The  charm  of 
Italy  and  her  people  had  reached  them  all,  in  spite  of  the 
bitter  national  antagonism  which  then  prevailed.  If  this 
charm  of  Italy  once  seizes  hold  of  any  one  it  lasts  him  his 
life.  And  it  is  due,  not  merely  to  the  combination  of  beauty 
of  scenery  and  old  buildings,  to  historic  associations  and 
exquisite  art,  but  to  the  delightful  character  of  the  people 
themselves.  Even  the  Southern  Italians,  who  are  regarded 
by  the  Northerners  almost  as  a  strange  and  inferior  folk, 
have  charming  qualities  which  not  even  the  Mafia  and  the 
Camorra,  and  the  general  addiction  to  saying  what  is  pleas- 
ing rather  than  what  is  true,  can  obscure.  I  could  well 
understand  the  feeling  of  that  old  Austrian  colonel;  yet  I 
rather  think  he  was  one  of  Radetzky's  men  in  '48  and  '49. 
Thus,  fatigued  and  yet  again  fumigated,  we  got  back  to 
Venice.  A  period  of  transition  indeed.  The  Austrian  troops 
had  gone :  the  Italian  troops  had  not  come  in.  The  famous 
performances  of  the  Austrian  band  in  the  Piazza  San  Marco 
were  at  an  end,  and  the  Venetians  themselves  almost  re- 
gretted their  cessation.  Why  is  it,  by  the  way,  that  no- 
where are  there  such  glorious  military  bands  as  in  Austria  ? 
The  finest  display  of  this  kind  I  ever  heard  was  during  the 
armistice,  when  all  the  bands  of  the  great  garrison  of  Verona 
played  together  in  front  of  General  John's  headquarters.  I 
had  gone  out  from  my  hotel  to  stroll  listlessly  in  the  evening 
through  the  beautiful  city,  when  I  was  attracted  by  the 
sound  of  the  bands  in  the  distance.  When  I  got  closer  to 
the  performers  I  soon  found  out  that  I  had  been  lucky 
enough  to  be  present  at  an  exceptional  entertainment. 
The  bands  of  all  the  regiments  in  garrison  were  playing 
together.  The  playing  was  quite  magnificent.  Attack, 
rhythm,  vivacity,  tone,  expression,  feeling,  they  were  all 
present;  and  nobody  would  have  believed  that  the  men 
had  not  been  practising  together  for  months  before.  How 


42  THE  RECORD  OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

they  contrived  to  combine  such  a  volume  of  sound  from  brass 
instruments  with  such  a  softness  of  tone,  I  have  never  yet 
understood.  The  same  qualities  were  shown  by  the  Austrian 
bands  on  the  Piazza  San  Marco,  and  when  the  Italians  came 
to  take  their  place  the  contrast  was  so  marked  that  not  all  the 
Venetian  enthusiasm  for  the  national  triumph  could  conceal  the 
disappointment  of  the  habitual  listeners.  The  Italians  are, 
of  course,  a  musical  people.  Some  of  the  chorus-singing  in 
Venice  itself  is  very  fine.  But  it  would  be  as  reasonable 
to  compare  a  German  tenor  to  Mario  or  Caruso  as  to  put 
an  Italian  military  band  on  the  same  level  as  an  Austrian. 

It  was  a  little  wearisome  waiting,  even  in  Venice,  day 
after  day,  for  the  incoming  of  the  Italian  troops.  And 
yet,  as  Rochefoucauld  truly  says,  you  are  never  really  so 
happy  or  so  unhappy  as  you  think.  Those  weeks  gave  me 
some  keen  enjoyment.  Our  nights  out  in  front  of  the  Cafe 
Florian  with  the  men  I  have  already  mentioned,  and  now 
George  Meredith  and  Brackenbury  as  newcomers,  were 
wholly  delightful.  The  weather  was  fine  and  the  conversa- 
tion exceedingly  enjoyable.  I  was  much  the  youngest  of 
the  party,  and  I  was  treated  by  the  others  with  an  amount 
of  kindness  and  cordiality  which  I  remembered  for  years 
afterwards  with  gratitude,  and  recall  even  now  with  sincere 
pleasure.  I  spent  the  mornings  in  making  myself  thoroughly 
acquainted  with  Venice,  in  continuing  my  Italian  lessons  - 
Sala  and  I  used  to  overwhelm  our  teacher  Nicolini,  who 
had  been  one  of  the  aides-de-camp  of  the  famous  Hungarian 
General  Gorgei,  with  voluble  accounts  of  all  we  had  done  the 
previous  day  —  and  in  doing  such  writing  as  had  to  be  done. 

The  evenings  after  dinner  we  all  devoted  to  talks  in  the 
open.  We  were  a  merry  lot,  undoubtedly,  and  the  older 
at  any  rate  not  deficient  in  ability.  I  have  always  thought 
that,  owing  to  a  variety  of  reasons,  George  Augustus  Sala 
never  did  justice  to  his  own  powers,  nor  were  his  very  con- 
siderable faculties  properly  appreciated  either  by  his  friends 


ITALY  43 

or  the  public.  The  extent  and  accuracy  of  his  knowledge 
were  extraordinary,  and  his  capacity  for  concentrating  it 
upon  the  subject  in  hand  was  equally  remarkable.  Journal- 
ism as  he  used  it,  or  as  it  used  him,  was  a  positive  curse. 
Ideas  and  thoughts  which,  fully  worked  out,  would  have 
been  of  permanent  value,  were  employed  in  almost  mere- 
tricious fashion,  to  suit  what  was  supposed  to  be  the  taste 
of  the  readers  of  a  daily  newspaper  with  wide  circulation, 
whose  proprietors  regarded  all  he  wrote  merely  as  padding 
for  their  advertisements.  Yet,  provoking  as  his  style  often 
was,  some  of  his  most  rapidly- written  articles  show  what  he 
might  have  achieved  had  he  but  given  himself  the  chance. 
I  remember  a  sort  of  lightning  sketch  he  wrote  as  a  leading 
article  on  Carpeaux  the  French  sculptor,  which  seemed  to 
me  to  cover  within  the  space  of  a  column  and  a  half  really 
all  there  was  to  be  said  on  his  works,  and  the  wording  of  the 
criticism  was  as  good  as  the  artistic  appreciation  was  judi- 
cious. We  went  together  one  afternoon  into  the  Cathedral 
of  St.  Mark,  and  were  looking  around  us  in  the  gloom  of  the 
edifice  when  suddenly  the  whole  nave  was  flooded  with  a 
glorious  burst  of  sunlight  which  changed  the  aspect  of 
everything  in  the  great  church,  the  rays  being  reflected 
back  into  the  nave  from  a  concave  golden-tiled  recess 
immediately  over  the  altar. 

Thereupon  Sala  became  as  one  inspired.  All  that  the 
sun  had  ever  done  for  man  as  a  race  and  for  man  as  an 
individual  poured  forth  from  him  in  one  stream  of  quite 
astonishing  eloquence.  I  saw  the  world  and  its  products 
warm  up  and  expand  under  its  influence  and  mankind  in 
all  ages  rejoicing  in  its  glow.  Then  he  passed  on  to  those 
who  had  worshipped  the  sun  and  to  others  who,  in  dying 
as  in  living,  had  rejoiced  in  its  splendour  and  prayed  that 
their  last  hours  might  be  brightened  by  its  rays. 

Vieux  vagabond  le  soleil  est  a  moi. 


44  THE  RECORD   OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

His  marvellous  memory  was  never  at  fault.  The  lead- 
ing article  with  much  of  this  illustration  and  quotation  ap- 
peared duly  in  the  Daily  Telegraph,  but  the  freshness  and 
spontaneity  of  the  thing  had  somewhat  evaporated,  and  the 
simplicity  of  the  original  wording  had  almost  entirely  dis- 
appeared. Nearly  forty  years  afterwards  I  walked  with 
my  wife  into  the  cathedral  of  San  Marco  in  the  afternoon, 
and  Sala  seemed  again  to  stand  by  my  side,  like  a  gifted 
Silenus  with  high  artistic  appreciation,  and  the  Venice  of 
1866  was  once  more  before  me. 

And  so,  thoroughly  exploring  the  beauties  of  the  city,  we 
all  awaited  the  arrival  of  the  National  troops.  It  must  be 
borne  in  mind  that  the  Venice,  like  the  Rome,  of  that  day 
was  still  in  the  main  the  Venice  of  the  Middle  Ages.  Modern 
improvements  had  not  come  in  to  increase  rapidity  of  tran- 
sit and  general  comfort  at  the  expense  of  destroying  the  old 
associations.  Consequently,  when  the  Italian  authorities 
did  at  last  enter  Venice  and  came  in  procession  of  boats 
and  gondolas  up  the  Grand  Canal  we  might  almost  have 
been  assisting  at  some  great  celebration  of  the  olden  time. 
I  shall  never  forget  the  view  of  the  entry  as  the  vessels 
came  up  through  the  famous  bridge  of  the  Rialto  which 
formed  a  frame  to  the  picture.  It  was  a  splendid  as  well 
as  a  historical  scene  with  all  the  magnificent  palaces  looking 
down  on  the  commencement  of  the  new  era,  and  taking  the 
mind  back  to  the  records  of  the  past  of  Venice  with  its 
intense  political  selfishness  and  wonderful  artistic  grandeur. 
The  quarrels  of  our  gondolieri  with  those  of  the  neighbour- 
big  craft  brought  in  a  touch  of  humour;  though  I  was  glad 
indeed  that  some  very  charming  bright  English  girls  who 
were  with  us  and  claimed  to  understand  Italian  perfectly 
were  obviously  quite  ignorant  of  the  Venetian  dialect  and 
the  sort  of  talk  which  waterside  folk  of  all  nations  indulge 
in  when  in  anger.  If  those  fair  ladies,  having  arrived  at 
old  age,  glance  through  these  lines  they  may  perhaps  be 


ITALY  45 

amused  to  learn  that  they  heard  on  that  occasion,  without 
grasping  their  meaning,  some  of  the  most  outrageous  but 
at  the  same  time  humorous  phrases  of  personal  abuse  that 
were  ever  exchanged  in  any  known  language.  We  entered 
vigorous  remonstrances,  which  were,  of  course,  wholly  futile, 
against  these  utterances. 

When  I  left  Italy  I  did  so  with  the  full  intention  of  re- 
turning thither  very  soon,  to  enjoy  again  its  manifold 
beauties,  and  to  watch  the  growth  of  a  nation  which  had 
gained  more  by  its  numerous  defeats  than  its  fellow  peoples 
had  by  their  victories.  As  luck  would  have  it  I  did  not  see 
the  country  again  for  nearly  forty  years,  and  then  I  sadly 
doubted  whether  the  new  generation  of  peasants  who  had 
taken  the  places  of  those  with  whom  I  had  chatted  in  my 
early  manhood  were  benefited  by  the  change  of  rule.  The 
tax  on  grain  was  a  heavy  price  to  pay  for  independence,  and 
the  great  emigration  of  the  best  class  of  cultivators  to  the 
Argentina  and  the  United  States  has  been  a  mournful  con- 
sequence of  the  raising  of  Italy  to  the  rank  of  a  great  power ; 
though  the  heavy  remittances  home  of  the  emigrants  has 
done  away  altogether  with  the  pleasing  experience  of  get- 
ting thirty  francs  for  a  sovereign  and  even  a  Bank  of  France 
note  now  sells  at  a  small  discount  in  Rome.  Why  should 
I  not  confess  here  and  now  that,  enthusiastic  as  I  was  for 
the  emancipation  of  the  country  of  Mazzini,  Garibaldi  and 
Cavour,  modern  bourgeois  Italy  has  come  upon  me  with 
something  of  a  shock?  I  recognise  the  material  progress  in 
certain  directions,  but  —  well,  youth  has  its  illusions  and 
age  its  disappointments. 


CHAPTER  III 

HOME   INCIDENTS 

AT  any  rate  my  year  inltay  in  nowise  influenced  me  in  the 
direction  of  a  staid  legal  life  on  getting  back  to  London. 
Mine  was  a  sort  of  drifting  existence,  common  to  not  a  few 
men  of  my  age,  between  the  Temple  and  journalism,  society 
and  literature,  whist  at  the  Clubs,  cricket  and  billiards. 
But  about  this  time  there  was  a  spasm  of  poverty,  excep- 
tional even  for  the  poverty-stricken  East  End  of  London, 
which  awakened  a  responsive  tremor  of  fitful  sympathy 
among  the  well-to-do.  This  sort  of  thing  comes  at  intervals. 
Suddenly  the  West  End  of  London,  the  fashionable  dwellers 
in  Belgravia  and  Bayswater,  Mayfair  and  South  Kensing- 
ton, awakened  to  the  fact  that  there  were  some  2,000,000 
or  3,000,000  people  in  the  brick  and  mortar  wilderness 
beyond  the  Bank  of  England,  many  of  them  in  very  woeful 
distress.  It  became  quite  the  proper  thing  to  go  down 
East.  Guardsmen  and  girls  of  the  period,  rich  philan- 
thropists and  prophets  of  Piccadilly,  students  of  human 
nature  and  cynics  on  the  make,  betook  themselves  with 
hearts  and  pockets  bursting  with  charity  to  the  choicest 
rookeries  to  be  found  along  the  riverside. 

My  Lady  Bountiful  could  be  seen  picking  her  way  through 
some  unsavoury  slum  in  the  neighbourhood  of  Limehouse, 
chance  encounters  of  high-born  personages  were  frequent  in 
the  Ratcliff  Highway,  and  more  deliberate  assignations  were 
commonly  made  in  the  Poplar  alleys.  Many  a  marriage  in 
high  life  was  the  outcome  of  these  exciting  excursions  into 
the  unknown  haunts  of  the  poor.  When  the  excitement 

46 


HOME  INCIDENTS  47 

was  over  and  the  interest  flagged,  when  benevolence  became 
rather  a  bore  and  charity  too  expensive,  our  exquisites  returned 
with  their  carriages  and  their  footmen  and  things  went  on  as 
before,  till  ten  or  fifteen  years  later  the  whole  unseemly 
farce  is  enacted  over  again.  My  friend  of  Trinity,  Raymond 
Lluellyn,  was  swept  along  in  this  direction  by  a  feeling  of 
genuine  sympathy  and  persuaded  me  to  go  with  him. 

I  was  then  an  out-and-out  Radical,  believing  that  if  all 
the  people  only  had  the  vote  and  a  good  secular  education 
they  would  soon  put  a  new  and  better  face  upon  the  world. 
In  fact  my  Radicalism,  tempered  with  a  certain  apprecia- 
tion of  the  good  things  of  this  world,  and  a  knowledge  of 
how  to  get  and  use  them,  was  regarded  by  my  friends  as 
only  skin-deep.  But  a  Radical  I  was,  nevertheless,  and  I 
would  gladly  have  run  some  risks  in  order  to  obtain  speedily 
political  reforms  which  we  have  not  yet  got  more  than 
forty  years  later.  So  I  went  with  Lluellyn  and  saw 
the  poverty-and-crime-defaced  portions  of  our  metropolis 
thoroughly  —  so  thoroughly  that  I  have  never  needed  or 
wished  to  see  them  again.  I  know  they  exist,  I  have 
sounded  the  very  depth  of  them,  and  that  is  enough.  Yet 
I  am  bound  to  admit  that,  though  horrified  and  commiserat- 
ing, I  took  the  whole  of  these  dreadful  conditions,  the  dirt, 
the  squalor,  the  degradation,  the  raggedness,  the  nakedness, 
the  servility  and  the  ruffianism  to  be  inevitable :  a  state  of 
things  to  be  alleviated  but  which  could  never  be  wholly 
done  away  with.  After  a  few  weeks  of  actual  experience, 
however,  I  felt  that  Lluellyn  and  myself  might  well  be 
classed  as  triflers  too,  and  I  understood  a  little  the  sensa- 
tion of  hatred  which  some  of  the  miserable  felt  when  they 
saw  these  well-dressed,  well-fed  philanderers  from  afar 
coming  down  with  airs  of  superiority  to  pry  into  their 
wretchedness.  Possibly,  the  remembrance  of  these  horrors 
of  peace,  so  much  more  dreadful  to  me  than  even  the  horrors 
of  war,  had  its  effect  in  turning  my  mind  to  Socialism  later. 


48  THE   RECORD  OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

The  boom  in  slumming,  however,  soon  died  down :  the 
victims  of  society  were  left  once  more  to  wallow  in  their 
starvation  and  misery  uncared  for.  Lluellyn  my  companion 
on  this  trip  to  the  East  was  one  of  my  closest  friends.  We 
had  travelled  together,  amused  ourselves  together,  backed 
one  another's  bills  together,  and  shared  one  another's  good 
luck  together.  Somehow,  later,  he  fell  into  a  deep  depres- 
sion, from  no  cause  whatever  that  I  could  discover.  I  tried 
hard  to  rouse  him  up,  persuaded  him  to  come  away  for  a 
few  days,  twitted  him  with  being  in  love  —  all  to  no  pur- 
pose, his  despondency  only  increased.  One  fine  day  he 
came  to  see  me  looking  deplorably  ill,  indeed,  as  I  thought, 
like  to  die.  I  asked  him  what  was  the  matter  with  him  and 
pressed  him  to  tell  me  all  about  himself,  for  I  felt  deeply 
concerned.  At  last  it  came  out  that  he  had  tried  to  com- 
mit suicide  with  laudanum,  had  taken  an  overdose  and 
woke  up  many  hours  later,  much  to  his  surprise,  with  a 
frightful  headache  and  looking  the  physical  wreck  I  saw. 
I  only  recall  this  incident  now  because  Lluellyn  married  later 
a  rich  wife  who  was  devoted  to  him,  was  exceedingly  happy, 
took  to  politics  and  became  Tory  candidate  for  a  London 
constituency  and  only  died,  more  than  fifteen  years  after- 
wards, because  he  would  be  too  polite  to  a  Duke  who  had 
taken  the  chair  for  him  at  a  crowded  meeting  and,  driving 
home  on  the  box  of  his  brougham,  caught  cold  in  the  kid- 
neys, and  left  his  seat  to  be  won  by  Sir  Albert  Rollit  — 
which  was  a  great  misfortune  for  his  party.  I  have  only 
known  two  men  in  my  life  who  committed  suicide  at  the 
right  time  and  comfortably.  Why  it  should  be  regarded  as 
cowardly  to  join  the  majority  when  and  how  it  may  suit  your 
own  convenience  I  have  never  yet  been  able  to  understand. 

I  have  never  been  of  those  who  hold  that  what  is  called 
" capital  punishment"  should  be  done  away  with,  and  it 
has  always  seemed  to  me  one  of  the  most  remarkable  in- 
stances of  the  illogicality  of  the  human  mind  on  such  matters 


HOME  INCIDENTS  49 

that  desperate  Anarchists,  who  are  certainly  no  respecters 
of  human  life  in  their  "propaganda  of  deed"  against  ob- 
noxious individuals  or  classes,  should  be  even  more  zealous 
than  the  extremest  of  humanitarians  in  their  anxiety  to 
preserve  the  lives  of  common  non-political  murderers.  The 
argument  that  it  is  expedient  that  one  man,  or  a  great 
many  men,  should  die  for  the  people  seems  to  them  all- 
sufficient  when  brought  forward  in  support  of  their  own 
methods  of  spreading  the  light  by  putting  out  of  existence 
few  or  many  harmful  humans;  but  that  really  dangerous 
ruffians,  with  obviously  anti-social  tendencies,  should  be 
deprived,  in  the  most  effectual  manner  possible,  of  the 
opportunity  for  "removing"  any  more  of  their  species,  in 
order  to  gratify  their  lusts  or  to  indulge  their  greed  for  gain, 
is,  according  to  these  sentimental  disputants,  a  far  worse 
crime  on  the  part  of  society  towards  them  than  any  that 
either  criminals  or  anarchists  can  be  guilty  of  towards 
society. 

This,  I  say,  is  a  view  I  never  could  adopt.  If  a  man  or 
a  woman  is  a  deliberate  murderer,  either  by  direct  violence 
or  by  poison,  I  see  no  earthly  reason  why  other  persons,  who 
have  no  such  blots  on  their  record,  should  be  compelled  to 
provide  these  criminals  with  the  means  of  living;  why, 
moreover,  other  equally  innocent  human  beings  should  be 
condemned  for  many  years  to  watch  over  and  attend  to 
such  obnoxious  outcomes  of  our  civilised  life ;  nor  why, 
lastly,  society  as  a  whole  should  run  the  risk  of  such  crimi- 
nals escaping  from  custody  and  then  having  another  inn- 
ings at  homicide  or  take  to  reproducing  their  own  objec- 
tionable types  of  humanity.  "Stone  dead  hath  no  fellow" 
for  dealing  with  cases  of  this  kind.  A  few  years  will  see  the 
end  of  them  anyhow.  Why  wait  and  see? 

And  I  am  quite  prepared  to  extend  this  reasoning  even  farther 
and  to  protest  against  the  keeping  alive  of  criminal  lunatics. 
Why  should  they  inflict  themselves  upon  the  sane,  when  they 


50  THE   RECORD  OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

have  already  proved  that  they  are  a  danger  to  society?  A 
comfortable  introduction  into  nothingness,  unexpected  and 
therefore  unf eared,  can  surely  not  be  reckoned  as  "  capital 
punishment."  It  is  merely,  as  Lord  Bacon  puts  it,  "a 
laudable  method  of  procuring  an  easy  death";  anticipating 
a  later  and  probably  less  agreeable  departure  by  a  few  years. 

These  reflections  forced  themselves  very  strongly  on  my 
mind  when  I  was  staying  with  my  old  fellow-pupil  J.  F. 
Maurice,  then  a  Captain  of  Artillery  and  Professor  at  Sand- 
hurst. We  had  gone  out  for  a  long  walk  over  the  splendid 
commons  and  through  the  beautiful  pine  woods  which 
stretch  around  Farnborough,  when  we  came  upon  a  warder, 
walking  slowly  and  weakly  along,  his  shoulders  covered  with 
blood.  It  was  evident  from  his  dress  he  came  from  the 
Broadmoor  Asylum  for  criminal  lunatics,  which  was  situated 
not  far  off.  We  asked  him  what  was  the  matter,  who  had 
done  him  this  terrible  injury,  and  offered  to  help  him  along. 
He  refused  assistance,  but  told  us  that  his  hurt  was  due  to 
"that  scoundrel  Bisgrove,"  with  whom  he  had  been  out  for 
a  walk.  When  the  warder  was  stooping  down  looking  into 
a  rabbit-hole,  into  which  a  rabbit  had  just  disappeared, 
Bisgrove  came  behind  him  and  hit  him  a  tremendous  blow 
with  a  stone  on  the  back  of  the  head,  stunning  him  and 
causing  great  effusion  of  blood.  Bisgrove  then  made  off, 
leaving  the  unfortunate  warder  for  dead. 

We  went  with  the  injured  man,  and  getting  some  other 
people  from  the  neighbourhood  we  searched  the  surround- 
ing woods  and  commons  for  the  escaped  murderer.  It 
appeared  that  this  man  Bisgrove  had  killed  a  fellow  agri- 
cultural labourer  in  precisely  the  same  way,  and  having 
been  found  guilty  was  adjudged  on  the  ground  of  insanity 
to  be  imprisoned  for  life.  At  Broadmoor  he  was  thought 
to  be  quite  a  reasonable  sort  of  person  and  was  allowed  to 
go  out  walking  frequently,  accompanied  by  a  warder.  In 
this  way  he  got  the  opportunity  of  which  he  took  such  a 


HOME  INCIDENTS  51 

cowardly  advantage.  After  a  long  and  vain  attempt  to 
trace  the  assailant,  Maurice  and  I  returned  to  his  house, 
feeling  confident  that  with  the  country  for  miles  round 
roused  up  to  track  and  capture  Bisgrove,  and  with  the 
police  active  on  his  trail,  we  should  soon  hear  he  had  been 
taken  and  returned  to  prison.  As  we  were  sitting  at  dinner, 
however,  we  had  an  unpleasant  surprise.  A  note  was  brought 
in  to  my  friend  and  host,  to  the  following  effect :  —  "My  dear 
Maurice.  Keep  your  weather  eye  lifting.  That  scoundrel 
Bisgrove  was  seen  to  get  over  into  your  garden  half  an 
hour  ago,"  signed  by  a  colonel  living  in  the  same  terrace. 
Up  jumped  Maurice  with  even  more  than  military  alacrity. 
" We'll  go  out,"  quoth  he,  "and  catch  the  fellow." 

It  was  now  full  dusk  deepening  into  pitch  dark,  and  I  could 
have  imagined  a  much  pleasanter  aid  to  digestion  than  an 
expedition  of  two  uneasy  gentlemen  in  dress  clothes  groping 
around  for  a  murdering  lunatic  amid  shrubs  and  trees  and 
hedges,  from  which  at  any  moment  the  miscreant  might  sally 
forth  and  attack  us.  But  I  could  not  show  disinclination  or 
venture  upon  remonstrance,  with  Maurice  so  hot  upon  the  trail. 
Out  I  went  too,  therefore,  and  for  a  good  half  hour  stumbled 
about  in  the  gloorn,  expecting  every  moment,  if  I  escaped  a 
battering  on  the  head  with  a  heavy  stone,  to  be  sharply 
engaged  in  a  tussle  for  life  with  a  madman.  Happily  —  I 
say  it  deliberately  —  happily,  neither  of  us  encountered  the 
fellow,  and  after  about  half  an  hour  of  this  amusement  we 
returned  to  the  dinner-table  and  drank  confusion  to  criminal 
lunatics  in  general  and  to  Bisgrove  in  particular.  The  man 
has  never  been  heard  of  from  that  day  to  this ;  but  for  years 
after  this  incident,  when  I  heard  of  some  inexplicable  and 
undiscovered  crime  of  violence,  I  have  wondered  whether  Bis- 
grove might  not  have  had  a  hand  in  it.  But  again  I  ask, 
why  should  we  run  the  risk  of  having  such  a  person  let 
loose  upon  us  in  the  name  of  pseudo-philanthropy  ?  What 
on  earth  is  gained  by  it  ? 


CHAPTER  IV 

MAZZINI 

AMONG  the  men  whose  acquaintance  I  made  in  the  Tyrol, 
who  afterwards  became  my  intimate  friends,  was  Boyd 
Kinnear,  then  a  well-known  barrister  and  a  leader-writer 
for  the  Daily  News.  His  enthusiasm  for  the  Italian  cause 
had  taken  him  out  as  a  volunteer  private  in  Garibaldi's 
army.  It  was  by  him  I  was  introduced  to  Mazzini  and 
thus  came  to  know  the  great  Italian  so  well  as  I  did,  from 
that  first  interview  to  the  end  of  his  life.  I  have  never  been 
a  hero-worshipper,  and  when  I  meet  men  who  have  done 
great  things  my  first  inclination,  much  as  I  may  admire 
them,  is  to  try  to  discover  how  it  is  they  have  thus  been 
able  to  impress  themselves  on  their  day  and  generation, 
and  what  personal  qualities  they  possess  which  give  them 
their  wide  influence.  When,  however,  Kinnear  and  I  turned 
into  the  row  of  small,  gloomy-looking  houses  which,  with 
trees  and  shrubs  in  front  of  them,  stood  back  from  the  main 
stream  of  traffic  along  the  Fulham  Road,  I  felt  a  sensation 
of  something  approaching  to  nervousness  which  has  never 
affected  me  before  or  since.  For  I  was  about  to  meet  close 
at  hand,  and  on  terms  which  might  easily  develop  into 
those  of  friendship,  if  I  were  able  to  gain  his  confidence, 
the  man  who  for  many  a  long  year  had  kept  England  and 
Europe  looking  with  watchful  interest  at  his  career;  who 
was  represented  by  the  reactionary  press  as  a  ruthless  assassin 
and  cold  sacrificer  of  noble  young  lives  to  a  hopeless  cause ; 
who  was  regarded  as  so  dangerous  by  the  governing  classes 
here  that  his  letters  were  systematically  opened  in  the  Post 

52 


MAZZINI  53 

Office,  and  a  leading  politician  was  driven  out  of  office 
because  he  was  believed  to  be  too  closely  concerned  in  his 
schemes. 

On  the  other  hand,  Giuseppe  Mazzini  had  concentrated 
{ round  himself  a  band  of  personal  friends  and  devoted  en- 
thusiasts such  as  no  other  personage  in  modern  times  had 
been  able  to  secure.  That  Italians  should  respect  and  even 
.adore  the  high-spirited  patriot  and  many-sided  conspirator 
who  had  kept  alive  the  idea  of  a  united  Italy,  with  Rome 
as  its  capital,  when  hope  had  died  down  in  all  other  hearts, 
was  intelligible  enough.  It  would  have  been  strange  in- 
deed if  the  daring  organiser  and  inspirer  of  his  countrymen 
who,  at  the  hourly  risk  of  his  life,  would  visit  the  revolu- 
tionary centres  throughout  Italy  in  disguise,  encouraging 
the  depressed  and  firing  their  faculties  with  a  fresh  life, 
had  not  become  the  idol  of  the  "  Young  Italy,"  which  was 
just  beginning  to  realise  some  of  the  results  of  his  life-long 
efforts  and  sacrifices.  But  that  foreigners  who  had  no 

j  direct  connection  with  his  country  should  have  been    in- 
>j «1 |  fluenced  in  the  same  way  proves  what  an    extraordinary 
power  over  others  this  remarkable  man  possessed. 

t  Peter  Taylor,  Stansfeld,  Kinnear,  and  Co  wen,  were  not 
people  easy  to  induce  to  do  what  they  had  at  first  no  mind 

( to  attempt.     Yet  Mazzini's  influence  over  them  and  many 

'  others,  women  as  well  as  men,  of  a  very  different  race  and 
character  from  his  own,  was  beyond  all  question.  Joseph 

^  Cowen,  who  was  one  of  his  most  earnest  and  devoted  sup- 
porters, once  said  to  me,  "When  I  think  of  the  things  I 
did  at  the  instance  of  that  man  my  hair  almost  stands  on 

I  end."  And  I  know  that  some  of  the  risks  which  the  late 
member  for  Newcastle  ran  in  the  matter  of  supplying  arms 
to  the  revolutionaries  and  giving  aid  to  their  plots  would 
drive  our  timorous  Radicals  of  to-day  into  fits  of  terror- 
stricken  apprehension.  Then,  too,  the  remembrance  of  the 
Orsini  bomb-thro  wing  at  the  Emperor  Napoleon  III.,  with, 


54  THE  RECORD  OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

as  was  believed,  the  war  of  1859  as  its  consequence;  the 
trial  of  Dr.  Bernard  for  taking  part  in  the  preparations  for 
the  attempt,  his  triumphant  acquittal  after  Mr.  Edwin 
James's  robustious  challenge  to  the  600,000  French  bayonets, 
which  he  suggested  were  glittering  before  the  eyes  of  the 
jurymen  called  upon  to  render  a  just  and  fearless  verdict; 
the  violent  attacks  made  upon  Mazzini  himself  as  an  assassin 
and  a  murderer,  which  even  the  reverence  for  him  displayed 
by  the  popular  hero  Garibaldi  could  not  altogether  counter- 
act —  the  remembrance  of  all  this  as  well  as  of  the  effect 
produced  upon  myself  by  his  writings  in  admirable  English 
was,  I  say,  still  fresh  in  my  mind  as  I  walked  towards  his 
lodgings.  So  there  is  no  wonder  that,  as  my  friend  knocked 
and  rang  that  afternoon  at  the  house  where  I  was  to  meet 
Mazzini  for  the  first  time,  the  mean  and  commonplace  sur- 
roundings of  the  Fulham  Road  faded  from  before  me  and 
only  the  conception  of  the  great  personality  we  were  to  talk 
with  held  my  thoughts  and  compelled  my  memory. 
•  It  was  a  shabby  lodging-house.  The  servant  who  opened 
the  door  had  none  of  the  bright,  spruce  appearance  which 
sometimes  flashes  out  unexpectedly  upon  the  visitor  in  the 
person  of  the  housemaid  with  clean  white  cap  and  apron 
and  pleasant,  laughing  face.  Dulness  pervaded  the  whole 
place,  and  even  its  cleanliness  was  none  too  obvious.  Yet, 
as  I  climbed  up  that  depressing  staircase  behind  Kinnear, 
some  ideas  little  suited  to  the  surroundings  rushed  through 
my  mind.  In  particular  that  fine  description  in  which 
Mazzini  tells  us  how  one  evening,  walking,  just  before  sun- 
down along  the  Appian  Way,  with  its  memories  of  the  past 
surging  up  around  him,  he  thought  of  all  the  great  men 
who  had  fought  and  fallen  on  that  historic  high-road  for 
the  emancipation  of  the  people  and  the  liberation  of  Italy 
in  the  centuries  gone  by,  and  heard  them  calling  to  him 
from  their  graves  as  he  passed  along,  "How  much  longer 
have  we  to  wait?"  What  brought  the  passage  to  my  mind 


MAZZINI  55 

I  know  not,  possibly  the  very  incompatibility  of  the  sur- 
roundings, the  unbridgeable  distance  between  the  Roman 
Campagna  and  the  Fulham  Road;  but  these  words  were 
singing  in  my  ears  as  we  reached  the  drawing-room  and 
found  ourselves  in  the  presence  of  the  idealist  creator  of 
Italian  unity. 

Mazzini  was  standing  with  his  back  to  the  fire  in  a  colour- 
less dressing-gown  with  a  more  than  half-smoked  cigar  in 
his  mouth,  which  he  took  in  his  hand  as  he  turned  round 
^  and  came  forward  to  greet  us.  An  inveterate  smoker,  I 
I  never  remember  to  have  seen  him  without  that  half-smoked 
cigar  between  his  lips  or  in  his  fingers.  A  thin,  slender 
figure  of  middle  height,  the  face  which  surmounted  it, 
with  its  thin  greyish- white  beard  and  much  bitten  moustache, 
so  trimmed  as  to  make  the  upper  part  of  his  face  and  head 
look  even  broader  than  it  was,  gave  the  impression  of  an  old 
ecclesiastical  ascetic,  and  the  wrinkled  skin  around  his  eyes 
increased  the  look  of  age.  As  you  met  him  the  contour  of 
his  face  ceased  to  present  itself  to  you,  you  saw  only  the 
eyes  and  the  mouth.  Just  forty-four  years  have  passed 
since  this  meeting  with  Mazzini  and  I  can  still  realise  in 
imagination  every  detail  of  his  personal  appearance,  and 
think  I  see  him  again  cordially  greeting  my  friend,  his 
sombre  countenance  lighting  up  with  pleasure  at  his  com- 
ing. It  was  the  eyes  that  were  so  much  the  most  expres- 
sive feature  in  his  face  that  they  alone  attracted  continuous 
attention,  and  in  speaking  with  him  I  had  that  strange  sen- 
sation which  has  often  come  upon  me  when  addressing  a 
large  and  interested  audience,  that  the  figures  and  faces 
disappear  and  only  the  eyes  of  the  crowd  remain.  In  fact, 
it  was  the  great  power  of  those  deep  and  brilliant  eyes  which 
entirely  relieved  Mazzini's  appearance,  even  in  repose,  from 
*  any  idea  of  the  commonplace.  They  struck  me  at  once  and 
they  impressed  me  ever  after.  Very  full  and  expressive 
and  dark.  You  could  see  right  into  them.  When  much 


56  THE  RECORD  OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

moved  or  excited  he  used  vigorous  gestures,  but  as  a  rule 
he  maintained  an  unusually  placid  demeanour  for  an  Italian. 
Simple,  unaffected  and  direct,  with  a  complete  volcano  of 
energy  and  passion  and  enthusiasm  underlying  this  seem- 
ing quietude  of  manner,  Mazzini  gained  his  influence  over 
men  by  sheer  devotion  to  his  cause,  unfailing  enthusiasm 
and  courage,  and  the  absence,  or  so  I  thought,  of  any  ap- 
pearance of  dictation.  I  was  frequently  alone  with  him 
j  and  had  good  opportunities  for  observing  him  when  he  had 
no  reason  to  conceal  his  feelings,  nor  even  to  repress  his 
ambitions.  A  less  self-seeking  or  personally  proud  man  I 
never  met.  Yet  he  had  an  abiding  consciousness  of  his  own 
dignity  and  the  ever-present  knowledge  that  he  represented 
a  great  cause  and  a  high  policy,  even  though  that  cause  was 
scarcely  making  way  as  he  would  have  wished  it,  and  his 
policy  as  a  whole,  being,  perhaps,  not  adapted  to  the  exist- 
ing situation,  seemed  at  the  time  doomed  to  defeat.  His 
attitude  towards  more  or  less  accredited  envoys  of  the 
Italian  Government,  however,  was  at  all  times  determined, 
not  to  say  arrogant,  enough.  When  such  men  approached 
him  his  charm  and  simplicity  of  manner  with  his  friends 
disappeared  at  once  and  he  became  the  dignified  represent- 
ative and  autocrat  of  a  great  socio-political  priesthood, 
treating,  as  a  great  Cardinal  or  Papal  Mayor  of  the  Palace 
might  have  done,  with  men  who  held  in  the  eyes  of  the 
world  a  much  superior  position  to  his  own,  as  really  stand- 
ing on  a  far  higher  elevation  than  they. 

I  saw  evidence  of  this  myself  on  more  than  one  occasion. 
But  Kinnear  told  me  of  an  interview  at  which  he  was  present, 
between  Mazzini  and  a  very  noble  personage  in  the  confidence 
of  Victor  Emmanuel,  which  quite  surprised  him  in  the 
quick  change  from  the  easy  chat  with  a  friend  to  the  ad- 
dress of  an  ecclesiastical  potentate  of  the  old  time  to  a 
misbehaving  baron.  "Tell  your  master,"  he  said,  and  the 
message  to  be  conveyed  did  not  lack  in  precision  or  even 


MAZZINI  57 

menace.  And  yet  Mazzini's  real  power  in  1867  was  much 
less  than  he  or  his  enemies  imagined.  It  was  the  shadow 
of  his  great  past  which  stood  behind  him  and  affected  his 
visitors. 

Few  foreigners  have  ever  spoken  and  written  the  English 
language  with  the  purity  of  Mazzini.  He  as  often  dis- 
cussed in  English  as  he  did  in  Italian.  To  hear  him  talk  at 
length  on  the  dangers  and  difficulties  of  the  early  days,  of 
the  sad  Bandiera  tragedy,  of  the  organisation  of  the  secret 
societies  —  still  by  far  the  best  model  for  such  dangerous 
associations,  —  of  the  glorious  "five  days"  of  Milan  and 
the  siege  of  Rome,  was  a  fine  education  in  the  moving  history 
of  the  period.  I  contemplated  at  that  time  writing  a  mono- 
graph on  the  European  revolutions  of  1848-49  and  I  was 
specially  interested  in  the  Roman  uprising,  with  the  action 
at  first  of  Pope  Pius  IX.  on  the  Liberal  side,  the  assassina- 
tion of  Rossi  and  the  success  and  failure  of  the  Roman 
Republic,  as  well  as  in  Daniele  Manin's  splendid  endeavour 
to  restore  the  ancient  independence  of  Venice. 

Mazzini  gave  me  all  the  help  he  could,  and  lent  me  books 
and  papers  which  I  could  have  got  from  no  one  else.  He 
also  introduced  me  to  the  third  member  of  the  famous 
Roman  triumvirate,  Aurelio  Saffi,  a  man  of  manners  so 
charming  and  intercourse  so  soft  and  genial  that  it  seemed 
impossible  he  could  be  at  bottom  the  courageous  leader 
and  indefatigable  revolutionist  he  undoubtedly  was.  From 
them  and  from  careful  reading  I  obtained  a  good  concep- 
tion of  this  stirring  period ;  while  as  to  the  events  in  Hun- 
gary I  got  direct  information  from  the  well-known  Ce, 
whom  I  knew  as  a  correspondent  under  the  name  of  Cer- 
ndtony,  Nicolini  and  Kossuth  himself.  Unfortunately,  I 
never  took  advantage  of  this  great  opportunity,  and  though 
the  facts  and  descriptions  are  still  to  my  hand,  and  I  seem 
even  now  to  be  able  to  live  back  into  the  midst  of  the  storm 
and  strife  of  that  stirring  time,  I  fear  the  work  will  never 


58  THE  RECORD   OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

be  done.  In  fact  the  only  thing  I  ever  wrote  of  any  length 
on  Italy  at  any  time  was  an  article  on  Cavour  in  the  Fort- 
nightly Review. 

It  may  not  be  out  of  place  to  say  a  word  here  about  that 
able  aristocrat  whom  I  have  myself  always  regarded  as  the 
greatest  statesman  of  the  nineteenth  century.  Until  the 
fiftieth  anniversary  of  his  lamented  death  Cavour  had  not, 
as  it  seems  to  me,  received  full  appreciation  from  his  coun- 
trymen. His  great  services  were  overshadowed,  to  some 
extent  at  least,  by  the  work  of  Mazzini  and  Garibaldi.  But 
with  all  my  admiration  for  those  two  fine  characters  I  was 
forced  to  recognise,  even  in  1866  and  1867,  that  without 
Cavour's  admirable  political  courage  and  statecraft  Italy 
would  never  have  arrived  at  the  point  she  had  already 
reached.  Taking  up  the  difficult  task  of  reinvigorating  Pied- 
mont and  encouraging  Italy  after  the  crushing  defeats  of 
1848  and  1849  Cavour  saw  clearly  that  mere  ideas  would 
not  emancipate  Italy.  She  needed  a  thoroughly  capable, 
well-equipped  and  well-disciplined  army,  with  the  possibility 
of  obtaining  a  powerful  ally.  His  native  State  of  Piedmont 
could  alone  supply  this.  Beginning  with  democratic  ideas 
he  accommodated  them  to  the  conditions  around  him, 
gained  for  Piedmont  a  position  in  the  councils  of  Europe, 
compelled  all  Italy  to  look  again  to  Turin  as  the  hope  for 
the  future,  inspired  his  own  people  with  confidence  in 
themselves  and  in  him,  used  the  monarchy  which  was  ready 
enough  to  be  used  as  a  solid  nucleus  round  which  to  rally 
his  forces,  employed  intrigue  and  secrecy  where  intrigue  and 
secrecy  were  necessary;  but  so  fully  explained  his  policy 
beforehand  to  his  countrymen  that  they  trusted  him  im- 
plicitly in  the  midst  of  the  greatest  difficulties,  made  tre- 
mendous sacrifices  where  such  sacrifices  were  unavoidable 
in  order  to  gain  greater  advantages,  took  all  the  responsi- 
bility for  partial  failure  and  unpopularity  entirely  upon 
himself,  and  succeeded  at  last  —  this  was  his  finest  triumph 


MAZZINI  59 

—  in  so  imposing  his  ideas  upon  Italy  and  the  Italians  that 
far  inferior  men  who  succeeded  him,  Ratazzi,  Minghetti, 
Visconti-Venosta,  inherited  with  his  position  some  reflection 
of  his  genius.  A  splendid  career  indeed. 

That  Mazzini  should  not  have  agreed  with  much  that 
Cavour  did  was  inevitable.  Mazzini  was  a  Republican  and 
a  Federalist,  and,  had  Italian  unity  been  possible  on  those 
lines,  it  is  quite  reasonable  to  say  that  his  views  were  the 
sounder.  But  as  matters  stood  Cavour  was  right.  And  he 
was  never  afraid  of  criticism,  in  fact  he  courted  it;  neither 
did  he  allow  any  minor  matters  to  stand  in  the  way  of 
what  he  judged  to  be  advisable  politically  because  he  was 
not  specially  favourable  to  them  socially.  His  amusements 
with  the  King  and  Sir  James  Hudson  could  only  be  defended 
'  on  this  ground.  Mazzini,  in  fact,  did  not  understand 
i  Cavour;  though  Cavour,  I  fancy,  quite  understood  Mazzini, 
j  even  when  he  opposed  and  thwarted  and  denounced  him. 
The  statesman  was  playing  a  very  great  and  deep  game, 
]  and  he  was  bound,  it  seems  to  me,  to  regard  Mazzini  and 
his  followers,  with  all  their  noble  idealism,  as  only  one  ele- 
ment in  it,  and  this,  of  course,  Mazzini  could  not  be  ex- 
pected to  appreciate.  Though  I  scarcely  know  why,  I 
never  discussed  Cavour  directly  with  Mazzini;  yet  I  know 
he  felt  that  the  dominating  role  taken  up  by  Piedmont  and 
the  House  of  Savoy  under  Cavour's  leadership,  in  the  en- 
franchisement and  consolidation  of  Italy,  could  not  in  the 
long  run  be  to  the  advantage  of  his  country.  With  all  my 
admiration  for  Mazzini  and  his  splendid  idealism  I  felt  he 
was  wrong  then,  and,  though  Italy  has  still  a  long  and  a 
hard  row  to  hoe  before  she  attains  to  a  complete  control 
over  her  own  destinies,  I  still  am  of  opinion  that  he  mis- 
judged the  situation.  Garibaldi  was  even  more  opposed  to 
the  great  statesman  than  was  Mazzini.  He  never  forgave 
Cavour  for  having  traded  away  the  provinces  of  Nice  and 
Savoy,  even  for  Lombardy  and  Tuscany,  and  all  that  fol- 


60  THE  RECORD  OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

lowed  thereupon.  Cavour  had  made  him,  he  said,  a  for- 
eigner in  the  land  of  his  birth. 

There  must  always  be  this  antagonism  between  the  idealist 
and  the  man  of  affairs,  and  even  Mazzini  himself,  as  dictator 
in  Rome,  became  inevitably  the  man  of  business  for  the 
time  being.  To  recognise  the  truth  of  this  proposition  it 
needs  only  to  be  stated.  And  Cavour,  before  he  came  to 
power  and  probably  afterwards,  was  an  idealist  at  bottom 
too.  That  he  throughout  fought  hard  for  freedom  and 
democracy  is  indisputable,  and  he  even  overrated  the  value 
of  Parliament,  as  we  can  now  see.  But  he  accepted  cen- 
tralisation because  he  saw  no  other  way  out.  Mazzini,  on 
the  contrary,  held  that  the  Italian  cities  and  provinces  had 
had  too  long  and  too  remarkable  an  individual  history 
separately,  for  any  plan  of  centralisation  to  be  permanently 
successful.  Moreover,  the  nature  of  the  peoples  was  dif- 
ferent :  in  particular  it  would  take  two  or  three  generations 
in  his  opinion  before  Piedmontese  and  Neapolitans  could 
understand  one  another.  Therefore,  though  the  army  or 
the  armed  citizen  force  of  the  whole  people  should  always 
be  national,  the  civil  administration  in  Mazzini's  opinion 
should  always  be  federal.  It  is  possible  that  this  is  after 
all  the  true  solution  of  existing  difficulties. 

Mazzini's  conception  of  the  conduct  of  human  life  was  a 
high  and  a  noble  one,  nor  is  it  at  all  fair  to  him  to  say  that 
he  was  not  deeply  interested  in  the  welfare  of  the  working 
people  of  other  nations.  His  writings  and  his  speeches  all 
tell  to  the  contrary  of  that.  But  his  mind  was  really  deeply 
religious,  he  believed  firmly  in  God  and  in  Duty  and  he  was 
a  convinced  Nationalist,  not  in  the  Socialist  sense  an  Inter- 
nationalist. He  possessed  no  thorough  knowledge  of  political 
economy  and  had  a  strong  dislike,  not  unmingled  with  con- 
tempt, for  what  he  regarded  as  the  debasing  materialism  of 
Socialism.  Hence  his  determined  though  unsuccessful  op- 
position to  Marx  in  the  early  days  of  the  " International," 


MAZZINI  61 

and  his  vigorous  condemnation  a  little  later  of  the  Paris 
Commune:    actions  which  have  led  many  Socialists  to  be 

I  very  unjust  to  one  of  the  really  great  figures  of  the  nine- 
jteenth  century.  I  may  have  something  to  add  on  this 
'antagonism  between  Mazzini  and  his  national  idealism  on 
the  one  side  and  Marx  and  his  international  realism  on  the 
other  later  on.  But  for  the  moment  I  will  only  say  that, 
knowing  both  men  and  their  works  well  and  having  been 
much  more  deeply  influenced  intellectually  by  the  latter 

f  than  by  the  former,  I  still  feel  all  these  long  years  after- 
wards that  Mazzini's  fine  view  of  what  humanity  might  be 
could  ill  have  been  spared. 

Many  a  time  I  asked  him,  from  different  points  of  view, 
what  he  meant  by  the  word  "duty"  and  how  he  could  be 
sure  that  the  intentions  of  a  Supreme  Being  were  fully  under- 
stood, or  adequately  translated,  by  his  worshippers  and  ex- 
ponents. I  am  bound  to  say  I  never  got  an  answer  that 
satisfied  me.  For  Mazzini,  I  do  think,  had  so  completely 
persuaded  himself  that  his  conception  of  Duty  —  admittedly 

1  a  very  high  one  —  was  absolutely  right  and  was  so  pro- 

|  foundly  convinced  that  a  personal  God  existed,  and  in  the 
main  took  an  interest  in  and  superintended  the  course  of 
events,  that  he  could  not  comprehend  that  to  other  minds 
these  ideas  might  present  themselves  as  merely  the  un- 
verifiable  abstractions  of  a  religious  sentimentalist.  I  never 
pushed  my  objections  too  far.  I  felt  that  one  who  had  done 
so  much  had  earned  his  full  right  to  believe  in  a  creed  which 
had  been  so  all-sufficient  a  guide  for  him.  It  was  a  privilege 
for  a  young  student,  as  I  was,  to  be  the  friend  of  a  man 
of  such  genius  and  character,  and  that  was  enough  for  me. 
I  saw  Mazzini  for  the  last  time  at  the  end  of  1868.  I 
have  written  of  him  as  I  remember  him ;  for  there  are  very 
few  now  living  who  enjoyed  his  intimate  acquaintance  as  I 
did,  and  I  hope  it  will  be  many  a  long  day  before  his  memory 
ceases  to  be  cherished  in  the  England  which  was  to  him  a 


62  THE  RECORD  OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

second  country  and  which,  much  as  its  press  vilified  and 
traduced  him,  nevertheless  point-blank  refused  to  give  him 
up  to  the  monarchs  who  pressed  for  his  extradition.  Was 
Mazzini  himself  in  favour  of  assassination  in  countries  where 
all  freedoms  were  crushed  down  by  tyranny?  I  firmly 
believe  he  was,  and  for  my  part  I  do  not  regard  that  as  any 
blemish  whatever  on  a  great  man,  the  memory  of  whose  kindly 
intimacy  with  myself  I  shall  cherish  to  the  end  of  my  days. 
But  this  matter  of  assassination  undoubtedly  raised  a 
very  strong  prejudice  against  Mazzini  in  this  country.  In 
the  mind  of  the  ordinary  Englishman,  in  spite  of  all  his 
early  biblical  and  classical  training,  assassination,  under  any 
circumstances,  must  be  criminal.  Even  Disraeli's  champion- 
ship of  it,  when  no  other  effective  protest  is  possible  against 
crying  social  or  political  wrongs,  could  not  affect  this  view. 
And  yet  when  Marshal  Haynau  came  to  London  and  was 
chucked  into  a  vat  and  nearly  killed  by  Barclay  and  Per- 
kins' draymen,  because  he  had  had  women  flogged  at 
Brescia,  the  British  public  applauded  the  draymen.  If 
Haynau  had  died  they  would  have  applauded  still.  My 
friend  Stepniak,  too,  who  undoubtedly  stabbed  to  death  the 
titled  head  of  the  Russian  police,  was  received  with  open 
arms  by  the  well-to-do  educated  class  hi  Great  Britain, 
wrote  frequently  for  the  Times,  the  journal  which  was  most 
bitter  in  its  denunciation  of  Mazzini  and  his  friends,  and, 
when  he  met  with  his  sad  death  by  accident,  was  mourned 
as  a  man  of  the  highest  ability  and  character.  So  it  is  very 
difficult,  evidently,  to  form  any  definite  judgment  as  to  the 
line  Englishmen  will  take  in  dealing  with  such  matters. 
For  the  Austrians  in  Italy  were  at  times  guilty  of  as  great 
atrocities  as  the  Russians  hi  Poland,  and  Marshal  Haynau 
was  not,  unfortunately,  an  exceptional  military  tyrant  at 
that  time.  Italians,  also,  had  no  rights  of  free  speech  or  a 
free  press  and  their  power  of  effective  protest  was,  therefore, 
confined  to  assassination. 


MAZZINI  63 

Whether,  consequently,  assassination  is  a  proper  means  of 
bringing  about  a  great  political  change,  and  national  eman- 
cipation, or  not,  clearly  Mazzini,  even  supposing  he  was  at 
heart  an  assassin  himself,  had  every  possible  excuse  for 
resorting  to  this  "wild  justice  of  revenge.'7  When,  too,  the 
jury  refused  to  find  a  verdict  of  guilty  against  Orsini's  asso- 
ciate and  co-conspirator,  Dr.  Bernard,  and  the  people  of 
London  acclaimed  them  as  noble  men,  they  both  certainly 
went  a  very  long  way,  in  my  opinion,  towards  declaring 
their  sympathy  with  the  anti-Napoleonic  bomb-thrower. 

With  reference  to  the  trial  and  acquittal  of  Dr.  Bernard 
for  complicity  in  the  Orsini  attempt  upon  Napoleon  III., 
which  I  well  remember  and  which  made  a  very  great  stir 
at  the  time,  my  old  friend  Mr.  Joseph  Cowen  told  me  an 
amusing  story,  showing  how  unsafe  it  is  to  trust  a  mob. 
A  great  demonstration  was  to  be  held  in  Hyde  Park  in 
honour  of  this  same  Dr.  Bernard,  who  had  become  a  great 
favourite  with  the  people,  accessory  to  attempted  assassina- 
tion before  the  fact  though  he  was  declared  to  be.  Mr. 
Cowen  and  two  or  three  friends  went  up  to  attend  this 
meeting.  When  they  got  into  the  Park,  and  before  they 
had  covered  nearly  half  the  distance  to  the  platforms,  they 
saw  a  man  come  rushing  towards  them  at  the  top  of  his 
speed,  bareheaded,  his  long  hair  flying  behind  him,  his  face 
ghastly  white  from  exertion,  and  half-dead,  as  it  appeared, 
from  fear.  For  following  close  upon  his  heels  was  a  great 
crowd  shrieking  "Down  with  the  spy/7  "Stop  him,'7  "Knock 
him  over,77  and  similar  pleasing  cries.  As  the  fugitive  came 
closer  Mr.  Cowen  and  his  friends  saw,  to  their  horror,  that 
the  man  was  no  other  than  Dr.  Bernard,  the  very  person 
in  whose  honour  the  demonstration  had  been  organised  ! 
They  gathered  round  him,  defended  him  against  his  assail- 
ants, telling  the  latter  to  no  purpose  who  their  supposed 
"spy"  was,  and  eventually  got  him  off  safely  into  a  cab. 

I  have  referred  to  Mazzini's  antagonism  to  Marx  in  the 


64  THE  RECORD  OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

" International"  and  his  denunciation  of  the  Commune  of 
Paris  and  tried  to  account  for  both  mistakes,  as  they  seem 
to  Socialists.  But  time  will  put  these  errors,  if  errors  from 
Mazzini's  point  of  view  they  were,  in  the  right  perspective. 
Not  having  been  a  Socialist  myself  at  the  time,  though  I 
sympathised  with  the*  Communists  in  their  rising,  and 
understanding  too  how  Marx's  able  domination  of  the  In- 
ternational must  have  galled  a  man  like  the  great  Italian, 
I  can  perhaps  appreciate  his  point  of  view  better  than  men 
who  did  not  know  him  in  those  days  of  nationalist  and 
idealist  agitation.  But  Mazzini  had  then  done  his  work, 
and  passing  away  shortly  afterwards  he  left  behind  him  the 
glorious  memory  of  being  the  one  person  who  kept  alive  in 
the  hearts  and  minds  of  his  countrymen  the  glorious  aspira- 
tion for  a  united  Italy  when  it  had  died  down  everywhere 
else. 


CHAPTER  V 

GEORGE  MEREDITH 

THE  name  of  this  remarkable  personality  recalls  a  long 
and  intimate  personal  friendship,  beginning  for  me  at 
the  early  age  of  eighteen  and  ending  only  with  George  Mere- 
dith's death.  I  knew  Meredith  well,  that  is  to  say,  for  just 
fifty  years.  From  the  days  when,  with  abilities  unrecog- 
nised, literary  fame  still  far  away  and  domestic  trouble  of 
the  bitterest  kind  gnawing  at  his  heart,  he  was  making  a 
hard  uphill  struggle  against  the  world,  lightened  by  keen 
and  joyous,  though  at  times  grim  humour  and  deep  poetical 
insight  and  appreciation;  up  to  the  days  when,  his  merits 
fully  admitted  and  his  genius  thoroughly  appreciated,  the 
desire  to  become  acquainted  with  such  a  man  as  he  drew 
men  and  women  of  distinction  from  all  nations  to  the  little 
cottage  under  Box  Hill,  and  his  death  was  mourned,  as  the 
departure  of  one  who  was  an  honour  to  his  country,  by 
millions  who  assuredly  could  not  understand  his  works. 

Meredith's  was  a  popularity  of  a  kind  conquered* but  cer- 
tainly not  sought  after,  and  the  study  of  so  deep  and  strange 
a  mind,  covered  up  as  a  rule  from  the  outside  world,  possessed 
for  me  a  great  fascination  which  I  resisted  and  pushed  aside 
as  scarcely  a  fitting  attitude  towards  so  close  a  friend.  I 
have  always  felt  that  to  analyse  the  habits  and  tendencies 
of  a  man  with  whom  one  is  on  terms  of  close  intimacy  is 
almost  an  irreverence.  On  the  other  hand,  it  is  quite  im- 
possible to  sympathise  with  the  grotesque  hero-worship 
that  envelopes  the  acknowledged  great  writer  in  a  cloud  of 
literary  adoration,  through  which  the  plain,  uninitiated, 
p  65 


66  THE  RECORD  OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

but  probably  none  the  less  judicious  admirer,  is  not  allowed 
to  penetrate.  However,  it  is  not  my  business  here  to  parade 
my  opinions  on  Meredith's  achievements  in  the  world  of 
letters,  save  in  so  far  as  they  come  naturally  hi  as  part  of 
my  relations  with  my  old  friend  himself. 

I  was  about  eighteen  when  I  made  the  acquaintance, 
which  rapidly  ripened  into  friendship,  of  Maurice  Fitz- 
gerald, son  of  John  Pur  cell  Fitzgerald  of  Boulge  Hall,  and 
therefore  nephew  of  Edward  Fitzgerald  the  translator  of 
Omar  Khayyam.  Fitzgerald,  whom  I  first  met  in  the 
cricket  field  and  as  a  member  of  the  Southdown  Club,  which 
comprised  at  the  time  some  of  the  best  amateur  batsmen  hi 
the  South  of  England,  was  one  of  those  men  who  never  do 
full  justice  to  themselves  in  the  world. 

I  have  always  regretted  much  that,  owing  to  family 
troubles  and  other  causes,  Maurice  Purcell  Fitzgerald  never 
developed,  or  at  any  rate  showed  to  the  public,  the  very 
considerable  abilities  which  he  unquestionably  possessed. 
Circumstances  drifted  him  out  of  the  field  of  leisurely 
literary  work,  in  which  I  think  he  was  qualified  to  shine  with 
at  least  as  much  brilliancy  as  his  uncle,  and  he  was  lost  in 
the  whirl  of  anonymous  journalism.  He  and  his  brother 
Gerald  unfortunately  possessed  a  father  quite  incapable  of 
looking  upon  his  sons  as  other  than  lost  souls,  who  could 
only  be  saved  from  sempiternal  roasting  hereafter  by  a  full 
share  of  unpleasantness  and  mortification  here.  Their  boy- 
hood and  youth,  so  far  as  home  influence  could  effect  it,  were 
made  a  burden  to  them,  a  burden  rendered  not  less  onerous  by 
the  delicate  consideration  of  a  stepmother.  Others  have 
overcome  much  greater  disadvantages  and  have  made  their 
mark  on  their  time.  It  is  quite  possible  Maurice  Fitzgerald 
himself  might  have  done  so,  had  he  lived ;  for  he  died  in 
1877,  just  as  life  was  beginning  to  look  brighter  for  him,  at 
the  early  age  of  forty-two,  leaving  only  some  admirable  trans- 
lations from  the  Greek  to  bear  witness  to  his  natural  faculty. 


GEORGE  MEREDITH  67 

My  intimacy  with  Fitzgerald  for  many  years  was  very 
close,  and  I  knew  his  wife  and  family  well  too.  His  only 
son  Gerald ,  who,  after  a  remarkable  bit  of  litigation,  in- 
herited the  family  property,  I  first  saw  as  a  mere  baby, 
then  knew  him  well  as  a  little  lad  of  six,  and  only  met  him 
again  lately  forty  years  later.  Maurice  Fitzgerald  himself 
used  at  one  time  to  bet  rather  heavily  on  horses,  and  cer- 
tainly had  the  worst  luck  at  that  pastime  of  any  man  I 
ever  heard  of,  except,  according  to  what  I  read,  the  present 
Mr.  Buchanan.  Fitzgerald,  who  knew  Lord  St.  Vincent 
well,  had  backed  that  nobleman's  famous  horse  Lord  Clif- 
den  for  the  Derby  to  win  a  very  large  sum  indeed  at  long 
odds.  But  the  amount  he  had  staked  in  order  to  have  the 
prospect  of  gaining  so  much  was  larger  than  he  could  afford 
to  lose.  When,  therefore,  Lord  Clifden  became  a  hot 
favourite  and  could  be  laid  against  at  a  very  short  price, 
Fitzgerald  instructed  his  commissioner  or  betting  agent  to 
cover  his  original  stake  at  the  current  rate  of  odds.  The 
agent  was  so  confident  the  horse  would  win  and  that  Fitz- 
gerald was  only  throwing  away  money  that  he  never  carried 
out  the  instructions.  In  the  actual  race  the  judge  decided 
that  Lord  Clifden  was  beaten  a  short  head  by  Mr.  Naylor's 
Maccaroni;  though  it  was  generally  believed  at  the  time 
that  this  was  a  grossly  incorrect  decision. 

Fitzgerald  did  not  win  his  money  and  was  greatly  disap- 
pointed; but  he  was  absolutely  horrified  to  discover  later 
that  he  had  to  pay  his  whole  bet  owing  to  the  action  of  his 
commissioner,  and  that  he  had  no  redress.  It  was  a  very 
serious  matter  for  him.  On  another  occasion  he  had  bet 
long  odds  on  a  horse  named  Fitzroy  in  a  match  at  New- 
market. Fitzroy  was  some  forty  lengths  ahead  of  his 
opponent  when  he  actually  fell  and  broke  his  leg !  On  yet 
a  third  occasion  he  had  backed  a  horse  named  the  Peer 
ridden  by  a  celebrated  jockey  of  the  day  named  Wells. 
The  animal  was  winning  easily  when,  by  some  extraordinary 


68  THE  RECORD  OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

accident,  his  jockey  mistook  the  winning  post,  and  having 
begun  to  pull  up  could  not  get  his  mount  going  again  soon 
enough  to  avert  defeat.  These  are  only  three  examples  of 
the  sort  of  luck  Maurice  Fitzgerald  had,  and  I  have  every 
reason  to  believe  that  his  account  of  what  befell  him  was 
quite  correct.  Is  there  such  a  thing  as  luck?  The  philoso- 
pher will  say  certainly  not.  But  I  am  quite  confident  that, 
however  little  evidence  may  be  brought  forward  to  justify 
the  belief  in  good  and  bad  luck,  there  is  a  vast  deal  of  luck 
in  life,  and  that  in  some  cases  it  is  impossible  to  fight  suc- 
cessfully against  it,  in  departments  of  human  affairs  very 
far  remote  from  the  surroundings  of  the  race-course. 

The  following  lines  of  translation  from  Sappho  give  an 
idea  of  Fitzgerald's  verse: 

Lake  a  ripe  red  apple 

On  the  topmost  bough, 
Higher  than  the  highest  — 

Who  shall  pluck  it  now  ? 

Come  the  apple-gleaners, 

Let  the  prize  go  by. 
Well  enough  they  see  it : 

They  cannot  reach  so  high  ! 

These  next  verses  are  a  little  too  long  for  the  motive  but 
they  are  amusing. 

WEDDING  AND  FUNERAL 

Why  at  a  wedding  eat  so  little  ? 

Why  at  a  wedding  weep  so  much  ? 
To  festive  scenes  sad  actions  fit  ill ; 

Yet,  friends,  the  case  is  such. 

We  cannot  eat  or  drink,  we  cannot  share 
The  senseless  joy  that  fires  the  vulgar  brain; 

We  weep  because  the  dear  departing  pair 
Will  soon  come  back  again. 


GEORGE  MEREDITH  69 

Why  at  a  funeral  weep  so  little  ? 

Why  at  a  funeral  eat  so  much  ? 
To  sad  scenes  festive  actions  fit  ill ; 

Yet,  friends,  the  case  is  such. 

We  eat,  we  drink  first  one  wine  then  another. 

We  cannot  squeeze  a  tear  out  if  we  would. 
We  joy  because  the  dear  departed  brother 

Has  gone  away  for  good  ! 

Through  Fitzgerald  it  was  that  I  was  brought  into  con- 
tact with  Meredith,  Burnand  and  others,  and  enjoyed 
delightful  times  together  at  Seaford,  then  quite  an  unknown 
little  place,  a  sort  of  village  of  the  dead,  one  of  the  old 
Cinque  Ports,  rejoicing  in  all  the  ancient  institutions  and  cere- 
monials of  the  Middle  Ages;  when  the  embouchure  of  the 
Ouse  was  at  Seaford  itself  instead  of  at  Newhaven,  and  its 
harbour  and  trade  with  Lewes  and  other  inland  towns 
made  it  quite  an  important  commercial  centre  in  its  way. 
Our  party  there  consisted  of  Fitzgerald,  his  elder  brother 
Gerald,  an  Italian  named  Vignati,  some  connection  of  Fitz- 
gerald's, Lawrence  the  portrait  painter,  and  the  two  men 
named  above.  I  was  at  the  time  playing  in  the  Sussex 
County  Cricket  eleven  but  I  generally  contrived  to  get  back 
in  the  evening,  and  jolly  evenings  and  days  those  were.  It 
was  all  so  spontaneous  and  unaffected.  The  villagers 
around  us  knew  nothing,  and  cared  less,  about  the  laugh- 
ing, chaffing  crew,  who,  with  the  sons  of  the  chief  local 
landowner,  were  making  merry  in  one  of  the  few  decent 
houses  on  the  front,  or  at  the  New  Inn,  already  some  cen- 
turies old. 

Though  Seaford  was  the  spot  at  which  Meredith's  first 
wife  had  carried  on  the  intrigue  with  Wallis  the  painter 
which  led  to  their  separation,  Meredith  shook  off  the  trouble 
this  had  occasioned  him  and  was  almost  as  jolly  as  Bur- 
nand, whose  unfailing  good  spirits  and  happy  humour  have 


70  THE  RECORD   OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

always  been  the  wonder  of  his  friends  from  his  early  days 
upwards.  The  Fitzgeralds  at  this  time  were  neither  of 
them  oppressed  by  the  worries  that  afterwards  attacked 
them  both,  and  generally  the  idea  of  the  whole  party  was, 
as  is  common  in  such  cases,  to  get  as  much  rest  and  amuse- 
ment out  of  this  chance  gathering  of  intimates  as  was  pos- 
sible, and,  as  is  not  so  common,  we  succeeded.  It  is  a  great 
pity  no  record  could  have  been  taken  of  the  conversations, 
seeing  that  for  brilliant  spontaneity  I  remember  nothing  at 
all  equal  to  them,  and  they  covered  a  very  wide  field.  Some 
day  I  may  endeavour  to  give  an  impression  of  them.  Mere- 
dith had  just  produced  Evan  Harrington  and  The  Ordeal  of 
Richard  Fever  el  while  he  and  Burn  and  and  Fitzgerald  were 
living  together  at  Esher.  Burnand,  having  been  turned 
loose  by  his  father  for  joining  the  Catholic  Church,  was 
making  his  way  as  burlesque- writer  and  journalist,  "Black- 
Eyed  Susan"  having  been  produced  at  the  St.  James  Theatre 
and  "Ixion"  being  in  preparation,  and 

Let  dogs  delight  to  bark  and  bite, 

For  'tis  their  nature  to  ; 
Let  bears  and  lions  roar  and  fight 

Then  why  not  me  and  you  ? 

Chorus  (regardless  of  grammar)  —  Then  why  not  me  and  you  ? 

But,  children,  you  should  never  let 

Your  angry  passions  rise. 
Your  little  hands  were  never  never  meant 

To  black  each  other's  eyes  — 

was  given  to  the  sad  sea  waves  with  immense  fervour,  to  a 
tune  from  one  of  Verdi's  operas. 

But  Meredith  in  particular  was  at  his  best  in  those  days, 
and  being  quite  at  home  with  the  men  around  him,  and 
with  no  audience  he  felt  it  incumbent  upon  him  to  dazzle 
and  waiting  to  appreciate  his  good  things,  he  delivered  him- 


GEORGE  MEREDITH  71 

self  without  effort  or  artifice  of  all  the  really  profound  and 
poetic  and  humorous  thoughts  on  men  and  things  that 
welled  up  continually  within  him,  in  a  manner  that  I  recall 
with  delight  these  long  years  afterwards.  It  was  on  one 
of  these  occasions,  when  we  were  all  sitting  together  on  the 
beach  tossing  stones  lazily  into  the  sea  and  Meredith  was 
discoursing  with  even  more  than  ordinary  vivacity  and 
charm,  that  Burnand  suddenly  came  out  with  "  Damn  you, 
George,  why  won't  you  write  as  you  talk?"  I  had  just 
been  reading  Meredith's  novels  and  other  works  and  I 
understood  well  what  Burnand  meant. 

Why  Meredith,  with  such  a  wonderful  gift  of  clear,  forci- 
ble language  as  he  possessed  and  was  master  of,  should  have 
deliberately  cultivated  artificiality  I  never  have  been  able 
to  comprehend.  He  had  a  perfectly  marvellous  flow  of 
what  I  may  call  literary  high  spirits  throughout  his  life, 
and  his  unaffected  natural  talk,  such  as  this  at  Seaford, 
was  altogether  delightful.  But  his  writing  showed  even 
then  to  my  eye,  young  and  inexperienced  as  I  was,  little 
trace  of  this  unforced  outpouring  of  wisdom  and  wit ;  while 
his  conversation  was  almost  equally  artificial,  not  to 
say  stilted,  except  with  men  and  women  he  had  known 
well  for  years.  Sometimes  in  the  bosom  of  his  own  family, 
with  only  his  wife  and  children  —  whom  he  addressed  in 
the  same  tone  —  and  two  such  friends  present  he  went  on 
in  this  way.  This  show  talk  and  show  writing  of  Meredith's 
was  quite  as  brilliant  as  the  unconsidered  outpourings  of 
the  natural  man,  and  he  said  perhaps  even  cleverer  things ; 
but  his  wit  was  much  more  sardonic  and  somehow  you 
could  hear  the  clank  of  the  machinery  all  the  time.  Th.at 
is  why  I  love  to  think  of  the  days  at  Seaford,  and  some  of 
those  others  afterwards  down  at  Box  Hill. 

When  I  was  at  Trinity  Meredith  came  up  to  stay  with 
me  in  my  rooms  in  Rose  Street  for  a  fortnight,  and  I  believe 
he  had  a  thoroughly  good  time.  At  any  rate  he  always 


72  THE  RECORD  OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

said  so  and  I  think  felt  so.  By  this  time,  though  he  was 
thirteen  or  fourteen  years  my  senior,  I  had  got  to  know 
Meredith  very  well  indeed  and  fancied,  possibly  with  the 
presumption  of  youth,  that  I  understood  him  better  than 
he  thought  I  did.  I  had  become  accustomed  to  his  incisive 
methods  of  expression,  and  the  strange  way  in  which  he 
would  of  a  sudden  turn  into  ridicule  about  half  of  what  he 
had  said  seriously  just  before.  But  my  undergraduate 
friends  did  not  know  what  to  make  of  him,  and  I  daresay 
the  same  would  have  been  the  case  with  me  had  I  not  had 
the  previous  experience. 

That  Meredith  was  witty,  powerful,  active,  good-humoured 
and  a  very  keen  observer  of  all  that  was  going  on  around 
him  they  recognised  clearly  enough.  Yet  he  never  seemed 
to  be  conversing  on  the  same  plane  as  themselves,  clever 
fellows  as  some  of  them  were,  and  have  since  proved  them- 
selves to  be.  I  felt  this  myself  in  my  own  rooms,  and  I  am 
confident  that  the  lack  of  sympathy  arose  from  the  arti- 
ficiality I  have  noted.  For  Meredith  fully  enjoyed  and 
entered  into  the  untamed  fervour  of  youth  just  entering 
upon  its  physical  and  intellectual  emancipation.  Though 
no  judge  of  oarsmanship  or  games,  he  took  pleasure  in 
looking  on  at  rowing,  cricket,  racquets  and  sports  of  all 
kinds,  being  himself  always  in  training  and  very  much 
stronger  muscularly  than  he  looked.  In  fact  he  was  all 
wire  and  whipcord  without  a  spare  ounce  of  flesh  upon  him, 
and  his  endurance,  as  I  found  out  in  more  than  one  long 
exhausting  walk  and  vigorous  playful  tussles,  was  un- 
wearying. And  so  Meredith,  who  had  never  been  at  either 
University  before,  saw  Cambridge  and  the  undergraduate 
life  of  the  day  as  well  as  I  could  show  it:  looking  in  when 
possible  at  the  lecture-rooms,  lounging  round  the  backs  of 
the  Colleges,  watching  the  boats  on  the  Cam,  seeing  much 
of  interest  in  the  colleges  and  libraries,  going  down  to  Ely 
and  running  over  to  Newmarket. 


GEORGE  MEREDITH  73 

Nobody  outside  of  my  own  immediate  circle  of  friends 
knew  that  Meredith  was  that  fortnight  in  the  University, 
or  had  they  known  would  have  considered  the  fact  of  any 
importance  whatever ;  which  is  perhaps  rather  strange  when 
we  remember  that  he  had  already  written  more  than  one 
of  the  works,  including  the  Shaving  of  Shagpat,  by  which 
he  will  be  remembered.  But  he  had  yet  to  conquer  his 
public,  and  he  was  at  great  pains  to  render  this  task  most 
difficult.  Whether  Meredith  ever  made  use  afterwards  of 
the  pleasant  days,  as  to  me  at  least  they  were,  which  he 
spent  at  Cambridge,  I  have  never  been  able  to  discover, 
so  I  suppose  he  did  not;  but  in  his  private  letters  to  me 
he  not  unfrequently  referred  to  this  visit,  and  specially 
noted  the  fact  that  I  was  playing  in  the  University  Musical 
Orchestra,  which  was  supposed  to  be  fairly  good  even  in 
those  days;  and  Meredith  was  always  passionately  fond  of 
music.  I  wonder  whether  any  of  the  steadily  lessening 
band  of  those  who  met  him  with  me  then  remember  his 
visit. 

Afterwards,  at  Seaford,  at  Goodwood,  where  we  both 
went  as  Maurice  Fitzgerald's  guests  for  the  races,  at  the 
Oriental  Club  with  the  same  charming  host,  and  elsewhere, 
I  saw  Meredith  from  time  to  time.  Not,  however,  until  I 
had  taken  my  degree  and  had  passed  through  the  Italian 
campaign  of  1866,  did  I  again  meet  him  under  circumstances 
.which  threw  us  continuously  together.  This  was  less  than 
two  years  after  I  had  taken  my  degree,  and  when  I  ought 
to  have  been  at  work  at  the  Bar.  However  it  was  in  the 
summer  of  1866  I  met  Meredith  again,  at  the  Hotel  Cavour 
in  Milan  close  by  the  public  gardens.  I  did  not  know  he 
was  coming  out  to  Italy,  and  he  had  no  idea  at  the  time 
that  I  was  there  already  writing  about  the  campaign,  so 
our  meeting  was  a  surprise  to  us  both.  We  were  not  long 
in  one  another's  company  at  Milan,  however,  as  I  went  off 
on  a  long  jaunt  with  Sala  to  Genoa  and  other  towns,  get- 


74  THE   RECORD  OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

ting  round  eventually  to  Venice,  where  Meredith  joined  in 
with  the  party  at  the  Hotel  Vittoria. 

Meredith  was  at  this  time  acting  as  Special  Correspondent 
for  the  Morning  Post.  It  was,  I  imagine,  the  first  time  he 
had  undertaken  anything  of  the  kind,  and  the  work  did 
not  suit  him.  Certainly,  he  wrote  nothing  worth  reading 
in  his  new  capacity,  and  this  was  the  more  astonishing  as 
walking  through  the  calles  of  Venice  and  gondolaing  through 
its  Canals,  on  our  visits  to  places  of  interest,  Meredith's 
observations  on  the  works  of  art,  the  architecture,  the  his- 
tory and  the  people  were  extremely  interesting;  while  his 
reflections  and  general  talk  on  political  matters,  as  we 
used  to  sit  out  before  the  Cafe"  Florian  until  the  early  hours 
of  the  morning,  were  certainly  worth  reproducing.  But 
Meredith  positively  hated  writing  as  a  daily  task,  and 
could  not  bear  to  think  of  the  whole  thing  as  a  mere  matter 
of  business.  This  disturbed  his  vision  and  cramped  his  pen. 
The  Morning  Post  letters  are  commonplace,  not  even  high- 
class  photography  of  the  events  passing  before  his  eyes,  and 
far  inferior  to  what  Sala  was  writing  at  the  same  time. 
But  that  the  atmosphere  of  Italy  breathed  itself  into  him 
and  that  he  entered  fully  into  the  spirit  of  that  emancipa- 
tion period,  was  shown  later  in  his  novels  Vittoria  and 
Sandra  Belloni. 

That  was  the  feature  of  Meredith's  conceptions.  What 
was  going  on  around  him  he  absorbed  rather  than  reflected. 
And  his  imagination  enabled  him  to  depicture  even  scenes 
which  he  had  never  beheld  with  greater  force,  and  poetic 
insight  than  those  who  had  been  most  deeply  affected  by 
their  actual  beauty.  Meredith  had  never  been  in  the 
tropics,  yet  the  lady  in  the  Shaving  of  Shagpat  with  hair 
dishevelled  and  head  erect  "  stood  up  tall  and  straight  before 
him  like  a  palm  tree  before  the  moon."  He  had  never 
talked  with  Mazzini  nor  even  seen  him,  yet  he  could  write 
of  the  depth  of  Mazzini's  eyes,  "their  darkness  was  as  the 
I 


GEORGE  MEREDITH  75 

fringe  of  the  forest  and  not  as  the  night."  This  is  Meredith, 
the  picturesque,  at  his  best.  I  asked  him  what  made  him 
think  of  the  former  simile?  "The  hair  falling  over  her 
shoulders  and  her  slender  shape/ '  he  said.  Wandering 
through  the  tropics  and  seeing  a  palm  tree  standing  up  in 
a  high  place  under  the  moonlight,  this  simile  always  recurred 
to  my  mind. 

It  was  in  the  Hotel  Vittoria  at  Venice  that  there  occurred 
between  Meredith  and  Sala  one  of  those  ugly  scenes  which 
are  always  possible  when  men  of  entirely  opposite  character 
and  temper  meet.  There  was  little  or  nothing  in  common 
between  them.  Meredith's  keen  and  at  that  period  rather 
sardonic  and  satirical  intelligence  grated  on  Sala's  ebullience, 
and  there  was  a  continual  friction  below  the  surface  from 
the  first  time  they  met;  though  none  would  have  thought 
so  who  saw  all  of  us  cheerfully  chatting  on  the  Piazza  San 
Marco.  The  quarrel  arose,  as  such  quarrels  do,  out  of  a 
very  petty  matter,  which,  when  all  was  said,  only  amounted 
to  the  fact  that  Meredith,  though  just  in  all  his  dealings  and 
hospitable  in  his  way,  was  by  no  means  liberal,  while  Sala, 
though  extremely  liberal,  and  hospitable  as  well,  was  by  no 
means  always  just.  Anyway,  there  arose  a  tremendous 
storm  on  Sala's  part,  the  accumulated  outcome  of  weeks  of 
irritation,  and  he  insulted  Meredith  most  grossly  at  the 
hotel  table.  Meredith  could  easily  have  killed  Sala  in  any 
sort  of  personal  encounter,  but  he  kept  a  strong  restraint 
upon  himself  and  simply  went  away.  As  I  was  on  very 
good  terms  with  them  both  it  fell  to  me,  though  by  far  the 
youngest  of  the  party,  to  endeavour  to  make  peace,  and  I 
did  contrive  to  bring  about  a  temporary  understanding 
which  happily  lasted  long  enough  to  settle  the  matter,  as 
shortly  after  we  all  left  Venice  and  there  was  an  end  of  it. 
But  the  affair  was  none  the  less  unpleasant  at  the  time. 

For  years  after  this,  when  I  was  in  England,  I  used  to 
see  Meredith  frequently;  and  gradually  his  fame  grew,  but 


76  THE  RECORD  OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

still  more  with  the  judicious  and  critical  than  with  the 
public  at  large.  And  now  I  think  of  it,  just  before  leaving 
Venice,  I  ventured  on  a  laughing  prediction  which  has 
really  been  fulfilled  much  more  nearly  than  I  could  have 
possibly  anticipated  when  I  made  it.  We  were  discussing 
literary  matters,  Henty  and  Sala  and  Spicer  and  Meredith 
and  Brackenbury  and  I  at  our  accustomed  table  outside 
Florian's,  when  the  conversation  turned  on  Meredith's  own 
writings,  and  we  all  agreed  that  he  had  the  right  to  far 
higher  and  wider  popularity  than  he  had  yet  secured.  Mere- 
dith declared  that  he  always  wrote  with  a  standard  of  his 
own  before  him  and  that  he  did  not  care  for  popularity. 
This  the  rest  of  us  would  scarcely  accept,  and  I  blurted  out, 
"I  believe  you  will  be  popular  enough  one  day,  Meredith, 
and  the  funny  thing  is  you  will  be  appreciated  even  more 
for  your  defects  than  for  your  merits."  Meredith  himself 
laughed,  and  really  I  think  I  spoke  wiser  than  I  knew. 

And  so  our  intimacy  continued,  and  after  I  became  a 
member  of  the  Garrick  Club  became  yet  closer.  But  still 
Meredith  was  not  regarded  as  the  great  writer  he  undoubtedly 
was.  I  may  be  wrong,  but  I  have  always  thought  that  the 
commencement  of  a  fuller  recognition  of  his  power  and  his 
place  in  the  world  of  letters  was  due  to  a  review  of  Beau- 
champ's  Career  which  appeared  in  the  Pall  Mall  Gazette. 
Greenwood  asked  me  to  review  the  book  and  I  declined  on 
the  ground  that  I  knew  Meredith  too  well,  had  grown  up 
almost  from  boyhood  as  his  friend,  and  that  if  I  did  by 
chance  put  my  finger  on  any  weak  spots  he  would  be  sure 
to  hear  who  wrote  the  article  and,  though  he  might  not  be 
offended,  might  even  admit  the  truth  of  what  was  said, 
our  relations  would  no  longer  be  quite  the  same.  So  Traill 
wrote  the  review  which  rilled  two  fat  columns  of  the  Pall 
Mall.  Sure  enough  Meredith  asked  me  who  wrote  the  re- 
view, and  as  Greenwood,  who  was  himself  an  intimate 
friend  of  Meredith's,  had  no  objection,  I  told  him. 


GEORGE  MEREDITH  77 

He  was  pleased  with  the  criticism,  which  he  had  every 
reason  to  be  as  it  was  exceedingly  well  done  in  Traill's  best 
manner,  being  laudatory  and  appreciative  without  lacking 
discrimination.  I  asked  Meredith  if  he  would  like  to  meet 
Traill.  He  said  he  should.  So  I  invited  them  both  to 
dinner  at  the  New  University  Club.  We  had  a  very  pleasant 
time  and  Meredith  asked  Traill  down  to  Box  Hill  to  dine 
and  sleep  at  his  cottage.  Meredith  was  then  writing  The 
Egoist  and  during  Traill's  visit  read  him  the  Introduction. 
Something  in  Traili's  face  told  him  that  full  comprehension 
was  lacking.  "You  don't  understand  all  that?"  "No, 
I'll  be  damned  if  I  do/7  stammered  Traill.  Meredith  burst 
out  laughing.  "Well,  I  suppose  it  is  rather  hard,"  he  said. 
Traill  told  me  it  was  made  easier  afterwards,  but  I  don't 
consider  it  a  very  intelligible  piece  of  writing  even  now. 
But  I  do  believe  that  was  Meredith's  provoking  love  of 
obscurity.  He  loved  to  puzzle  his  readers.  "Damn  you, 
George,  why  won't  you  write  as  you  talk?"  I  told  Traill 
that  story  and  he  agreed  with  me  in  thinking  Burnand  hit 
the  nail  on  the  head ;  for  Traill,  who  wrote  with  admirable 
lucidity  himself,  could  not  understand  why  a  man  of  Mere- 
dith's genius  should  refuse  to  be  altogether  natural.  The 
deepest  water  may  be  quite  clear. 

Many  were  my  visits  to  Box  Hill  after  my  return  from 
Australia,  and  we  got  to  know  Meredith's  second  wife  very 
well  too :  they  staying  with  us  in  Devonshire  Street  and 
we  with  them  down  there.  I  have  heard  some  of  Meredith's 
friends  speak  rather  slightingly  of  this  lady,  as  if  she  were 
intellectually  quite  unworthy  of  her  husband.  Genius  has 
no  mate.  But  Mrs.  Meredith  was  a  charming,  clever,  tact- 
ful, and  handsome  Frenchwoman:  a  good  musician,  a 
pleasant  conversationalist,  a  most  considerate,  attentive  and 
patient  wife  and  an  excellent  mother.  Nobody  who  knew 
her  could  fail  to  admire,  esteem  and  like  her. 

Her   care   of   her  husband   was   always   thoughtful   but 


78  THE  RECORD  OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

never  obtrusive,  and  Meredith  with  all  his  high  qualities 
was  not  by  any  means  an  easy  man  to  live  with.  Writing 
men  mostly  are  not.  At  one  time  he  would  persist  in  turn- 
ing vegetarian.  It  was  well-nigh  the  death  of  him.  But 
he  had  persuaded  himself  that  that  was  the  right  sort  of 
food  to  give  the  highest  development  to  body  and  mind, 
and  persist  in  it  he  would.  What  was  to  be  done?  Mere- 
dith was  a  man  who  took  a  tremendous  lot  out  of  himself, 
not  only  intellectually  but  physically.  He  was  always 
throwing  about  clubs,  or  going  through  gymnastic  exercises, 
or  taking  long  walks  at  a  great  pace,  not  allowing  an  ounce 
of  fat  to  accumulate  on  his  body  or  his  face.  It  was  the 
same  with  his  writing.  He  never  pretended  to  take  matters 
easy.  So  poor  Mrs.  Meredith  had  a  hard  time  during  this 
bread  and  roots  period.  She  saw  her  husband  gradually 
going  down  hill  and  becoming  every  day  more  gaunt  and 
hungry-eyed  and  skeletonic ;  yet  if  she  or  any  one  else 
ventured  to  suggest  that  this  meagre  diet  was  unsuited  to  a 
man  of  his  habit  of  life  and  work,  and  that  —  this  very 
gently  —  his  increasing  acerbity  was  caused  by  sheer  lack 
of  sustenance  and  his  energy  consequently  sawing  into  his 
exposed  nerves  —  well,  it  was  a  case  of  " stand  from  under" 
very  quickly.  Mrs.  Meredith  tried  every  conceivable  device 
to  arrest  the  nerve  weakness  she  saw  coming  upon  Meredith. 
She  boiled  his  vegetables  in  strong  broth,  introduced  shredded 
meat  as  far  as  she  dared  into  his  bread  by  connivance  with  the 
baker,  and  tried  various  other  estimable  frauds  upon  him. 
All  to  no  purpose. 

She  begged  me  as  one  of  his  oldest  friends  to  try  what  I 
could  do.  I  did  try  and,  metaphorically  speaking,  fled  for 
my  life.  Really  I  thought  my  old  friend  would  die,  so 
determined  did  he  seem  to  commit  suicide  in  this  unpleasant 
way.  At  last  things  got  so  bad  and  he  was  so  weak  that  he 
recognised  the  truth  himself,  and  was  forced  to  admit  that 
a  man  who  does  double  duty  as  an  athlete  of  mind  as  well 


GEORGE  MEREDITH  79 

as  an  athlete  of  body  wants  another  animal  to  do  his  pre- 
liminary digestion  for  him,  if  he  is  to  keep  himself  up  to  the 
mark  at  all.  So  Meredith  took  to  meat-eating  again  and 
all  went  well;  but  I  have  always  thought  this  mistaken 
rush  to  a  vegetable  diet  was  responsible  for  the  lesion 
which  came  later.  For  Meredith  was  so  sound  in  every 
way  up  to  that  time  that  I  fully  believed  he  would  live  in 
good  health  and  vigour  to  the  age  of  a  hundred,  though  a 
man  who  preserved  his  faculties  as  well  as  Meredith  did  up 
to  over  eighty  had,  I  must  admit,  an  excellent  innings. 

To  return  to  Mrs.  Meredith.  This  lovable  lady  was  as 
humble  as  she  was  devoted.  They  were  going  out  together 
to  some  grand  party  and  she  said  to  my  wife,  "It  is  not 
me  they  want  to  see,  it  is  my  clever  husband."  I  remem- 
ber, too,  that  once  when  dining  with  us  a  well-known  man 
of  that  day  made  a  vigorous  attack  on  France  and  French 
life  and  French  women.  We  were  horrified  and  at  a  loss 
what  to  do  or  say.  Mrs.  Meredith,  however,  in  the  most 
pleasing  way  took  up  the  subject,  showed,  of  course,  in  a 
few  words  that  she  knew  a  great  deal  more  about  it  than 
the  unfortunate  critic,  and  without  the  least  betraying  that 
she  was  French  herself  put  things  right.  How  very  odd  it 
is,  by  the  way,  that  even  highly-educated  Englishmen  will 
at  most  awkward  moments  thus  display  their  ignorance  of 
French  life  and  home  manners.  Meredith  himself,  I  am 
sure,  fully  appreciated  his  wife's  fine  qualities,  and  his  home 
was  certainly  a  happy  one  while  she  lived. 

Many  a  pleasant  day  my  wife  and  I  passed  with  them  at 
Box  Hill,  I  taking  long  walks  with  Meredith  during  the  day 
and  playing  duets  with  Mrs.  Meredith  at  night.  The  first 
of  these  walks  I  remember  well  was  to  Epsom  and  back, 
to  see  the  Derby  run  in  the  race  won  by  Kisber.  It  was  a 
splendid  day,  the  air  was  bright  and  clear,  the  trees  were 
just  bursting  out  into  foliage,  and  Meredith  was  in  the 
highest  spirits,  full  of  the  joy  of  life  and  the  inspiration  of 


80  THE  RECORD  OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

the  happy  springtime.  Our  road  lay  up  hill  and  down 
dale,  and  as  we  mounted  a  slight  ascent,  whence  we  could 
see  the  race-course  in  the  distance,  the  roar  of  the  betting 
ring  and  the  clamour  of  the  multitude  broke  in  suddenly 
upon  our  conversation.  So  we  went  on,  Meredith  dis- 
coursing gloriously  in  the  valley,  the  turmoil  of  the  mob 
coming  in  as  chorus  upon  the  hill.  We  witnessed  the 
Derby  itself,  and  looked  down  upon  the  crowds  from  the 
elevation  above  Tattenham  Corner.  We  had  not  the  re- 
motest idea  which  horse  had  won  till  the  next  day.  But 
we  had  many  similar  walks  without  these  interruptions, 
and  very  pleasant  walks  they  were. 

When  I  went  in  for  my  studies  and  writing  on  India, 
and  afterwards  on  economic  subjects  and  Socialism,  I  got 
much  friendly  encouragement  from  Meredith,  who  was 
always  exceedingly  good-natured  to  younger  men.  Funnily 
enough,  however,  when  I  offered  to  translate  La  Russia 
Sotteranea  by  Stepniak,  the  first  copy  of  which  Kropotkin 
had  given  me  when  it  reached  England,  for  the  benefit  of 
the  Russian  Red  Cross  movement,  Meredith  declined  the 
book  as  "reader"  for  Messrs.  Chapman  &  Hall.  In  this 
case  I  think  his  judgment  was  wrong,  as  directly  the  six 
months  of  copyright  had  expired,  Messrs.  Smith  &  Elder 
brought  out  a  translation  which  had  a  very  large  sale. 
There  were  scenes  in  the  work  which  impressed  themselves 
very  strongly  on  my  mind,  notably  that  of  the  anonymous 
printer  in  the  secret  underground  press  who  went  on  work- 
ing, working,  working,  regardless  of  health,  danger  or  en- 
joyment, quite  satisfied  that  he,  the  unknown  toiler,  was 
helping  to  spread  the  light  in  the  world  above. 

At  a  later  date,  Socialism  and  bad  luck  having  seriously 
crippled  my  means,  I  thought  of  turning  to  journalism  as  a 
business,  having  previously  written  as  a  matter  of  intel- 
lectual pleasure,  though  I  was  fortunately  well  paid  for  what 
I  wrote.  I  was  lucky  enough  to  obtain  an  exceedingly  good 


GEORGE  MEREDITH  81 

offer  as  leader-writer  for  a  well-known  journal.  I  went  to 
Meredith  and  asked  him  whether  in  his  opinion  I  ought  to 
accept  this  proposal  and  tie  myself  up  partially  in  this  way, 
or  should  trust  to  some  knowledge  of  finance  I  possessed 
to  pull  me  through.  Meredith  strongly  advised  the  latter 
course.  "If  you  once  begin  to  write  regularly  for  money 
mostly,"  said  he,  "you  will  be  insensibly  drawn  into  the 
whirlpool  of  daily  journalism  and  may  never  be  able  to 
struggle  out  again.  You  cannot  possibly  do  what  you  are 
doing  and  be  a  thorough-going  journalist  too.  Keep  your- 
self independent  no  matter  at  what  cost."  As  my  wife 
was  ready  to  run  this  risk,  which  has  proved  to  be  a  risk 
indeed,  after  I  had  declined  to  go  in  as  a  regular  party  man, 
I  took  Meredith's  advice.  I  have  no  right  to  regret  this 
decision,  having  regard  to  the  great  progress  which  the 
cause  to  which  I  devoted  myself  has  made. 

As  I  was  churned  up  more  and  more  in  the  Socialist 
propaganda,  and  the  necessity  for  attending  to  my  own 
affairs  pressed  upon  me  at  the  same  time,  I  saw  Meredith 
less  and  less,  especially  after  I  very  foolishly  gave  up  my 
membership  of  the  Garrick  Club.  But  from  the  time  that 
Meredith's  health  began  to  fail,  we  always  went  down  to 
see  him  at  Box  Hill  as  often  as  we  could.  The  manner  in 
which  he  fought  against  a  physical  disability,  specially 
annoying  to  such  an  active  man  as  he,  always  astonished 
us.  The  struggle  to  maintain  some  semblance  of  his  old 
vigour  so  long  as  he  could  get  about  was  fine,  though  sad 
to  witness,  and  his  light-hearted  greeting  was  as  charming 
as  ever. 

Not,  however,  that  he  gave  up  his  artificiality.  This 
had  become  part  of  himself.  On  one  occasion  we  saw  this 
very  markedly.  We  were  sitting,  all  three  of  us,  Meredith 
and  my  wife  and  I,  on  the  old  oak  seat  which  lay  a  little 
above  his  ivy-covered  cottage,  on  the  path  that  led  up  to 
his  own  hermit  bungalow,  under  the  trees,  on  the  slope  of 


82  THE  RECORD  OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

the  hill.  Never,  even  in  the  very  best  of  his  health  and 
vigour,  was  he  more  cheerful  or  more  spontaneous  than 
when,  in  the  soft  summer  air,  with  the  flowers  around  us, 
and  the  sweep  of  green  down  stretching  far  away  beyond 
up  to  the  black  yew  trees  in  the  distance,  he  discoursed  of 
many  things  and  many  men,  the  old  time  and  the  new. 
We  listened  to  him  with  delight,  and  would  gladly  have 
listened  on.  As  it  grew  a  little  late,  he  told  us  that  Mr. 
John  Morley  and  Mr.  Haldane  were  coming  down  to  dine 
with  him  and  pressed  us  to  stay  and  meet  them,  an  invita- 
tion we  would  gladly  have  accepted  but  could  not.  A  few 
minutes  later  Mr.  Haldane  came  alone  up  the  path,  Mr. 
Morley  not  having  been  able  to  accompany  him,  and  seated 
himself  on  the  same  bench.  Straightway,  the  old  change 
from  the  fresh  and  familiar  to  the  artificial  and  brilliant 
was  made  manifest,  and  there  was  Meredith,  who  a  few 
minutes  before  had  been  as  full  of  easy  jollity  as  in  the 
Seaford  days,  again  forcing  his  intellect  to  strain  for  effect 
quite  unnecessarily,  and  to  us  who  admired  him,  most 
provokingly. 

On  this  occasion  he  gave  me  his  last  book  of  poems  and 
from  one  of  them  I  think  the  following  is  not  out  of  place : 

Responsive  never  to  soft  desire 

For  one  prized  tune  is  this  our  chord  of  life. 

'Tis  clipped  to  deadness  with  a  wanton  knife, 

In  wishes  that  for  ecstasies  aspire. 

Yet  have  we  glad  companionship  of  Youth, 

Elysian  meadows  for  the  mind, 

Dare  we  to  face  deeds  done,  and  in  our  tomb 

Filled  with  the  parti-coloured  bloom 

Of  loved  and  hated,  grasp  all  human  truth 

Sowed  by  us  down  the  mazy  paths  behind. 

To  feel  that  heaven  must  we  that  hell  sound  through : 

Whence  comes  a  line  of  continuity, 

That  brings  our  middle  station  into  view, 

Between  those  poles ;  a  novel  Earth  we  see, 


GEORGE  MEREDITH  83 

In  likeness  of  us,  made  of  banned  and  blest ; 

The  sower's  bed,  but  not  the  reaper's  rest : 

An  Earth  alive  with  meanings,  wherein  meet 

Buried,  and  breathing,  and  to  be. 

Then  of  the  junction  of  the  three, 

Even  as  a  heart  in  brain,  full  sweet 

May  sense  of  soul,  the  sum  of  music,  beat. 

My  correspondence  with  George  Meredith  was  frequent, 
and  extended  over  many  years.  Unfortunately,  when  we 
left  our  house  in  Devonshire  Street  in  1887  I  destroyed  most 
of  my  letters  from  men  of  note,  which  I  have  since  greatly 
regretted.  The  three  letters  below,  however,  give  an  idea 
of  his  style  and  of  the  warmth  of  his  heart : 

October  31,  1899. 

MY  DEAR  HYNDMAN  —  I  regard  your  article  in  Justice  with 
full  approval.  This  hateful  war  tears  me  in  two.  I  have  to  wish 
for  the  success  of  our  men  in  the  cause  that  I  condemn.  The 
Demon  is  in  that  mount  of  Gold.  I  had  always  the  dread  that 
the  first  steps  of  Imperialism  would  be  bloody.  Greenwood  has 
written  excellently.  But  the  tide  of  Brummagem  policy  was  too 
strong,  Cairo  to  the  Cape  a  mighty  hunger.  My  compliments 
and  regards  to  your  wife.  —  Yours  ever, 

(Signed)     GEORGE  MEREDITH. 

February  16,  1908. 

MY  DEAR  HYNDMAN  —  Your  second  kind  letter  smites  me  with 
remorse  of  the  unanswered  first  —  of  which  a  full  reply  has  been 
in  my  mind  since  I  received  it.  But  the  positive  pen  has  had  to 
do  work  incessantly,  chiefly  to  foolish  communications  asking 
questions  and  so  constraining  me.  I  am,  it  would  appear,  a  dis- 
covered man.  I  think  of  the  old  days,  my  visit  to  Cambridge, 
your  performance  on  the  flute ;  remembering  well  the  little  bit  of 
Beethoven,  and  your  fine  stand  in  the  cricket  field :  some  50 ! 
—  and  the  Hauptman  duets  with  my  wife  at  the  piano  —  all  as 
yesterday.  For  all  through  the  years  backward  I  conjure  at  with 
the  senses  and  the  feelings  of  the  day.  And  now  you  are  among 


84  THE  RECORD  _OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

the  foremost  in  the  fray,  while  I  do  but  sit  and  look  on.  I  am 
accused  sharply  by  myself,  and  yet  am  helpless.  You  can  imagine, 
therefore,  what  my  thoughts  are  when  congratulations  come 
showering  under  the  note  of  "happy  returns."  Cheerfulness  has 
not  forsaken  me,  but  Nature  has  cast  me  aside,  and  I  do  not  like 
this  mere  drawing  of  breath  without  payment  for  it.  However, 
I  take  pride  in  those  who  fight  gallantly  with  honest  conviction 
of  the  justness  of  their  cause.  Give  my  love  to  your  wife.  —  Very 
warmly  yours, 

(Signed)     GEORGE  MEREDITH. 

Box  HILL,  DORKING, 
January  5,  1909. 

MY  DEAR  HYNDMAN  —  If  I  delay  further  to  write  to  you  there 
is  no  knowing  when  I  shall  be  free,  for  I  am  burdened  with  letters 
compelling  to  replies  —  with  invitations  to  centenary  celebration 
poems !  No  wonder  you  are  down.  And  remember  that  it  is 
at  a  time  of  life  when  Nature's  reconstructive  powers  must  be 
laborious.  The  work  in  Justice  is  enough  to  wear  any  man.  I 
was  pleased  to  see  you  and  Blatchford  in  union  for  a  national 
army.  A  poem  of  mine,  "The  Call,"  in  the  Oxford  and  Cam- 
bridge Review  raised  the  same  cry.  One  may  fear  that  a  landing 
of  foreign  artillery  on  our  shores  alone  will  rouse  the  mercantile 
class.  Doubtless,  also,  there  is  an  apprehension  as  to  the  pru- 
dence of  schooling  the  toilers  in  the  use  of  arms.  We  are  not  yet 
a  people.  —  As  to  Morley  you  are  unjust.  He  did  the  best  that 
a  member  of  the  Cabinet  can  do,  in  a  position  beset  with  difficul- 
ties. —  You  spoke  of  a  visit  here  with  your  wife  last  year.  There 
is  a  welcome.  But  I  am  forbidden  to  mount  stairs,  and  the 
dining-room  of  the  cabin  makes  a  bedroom.  Worthy  friends, 
however,  have  consented  to  dine  in  the  sitting-room. 

(Signed)     GEORGE  MEREDITH. 

Meredith's  end  came  to  him  easily:  he  felt  he  had  done 
his  work,  though  he  worked  to  the  last;  and  he  knew  that 
he  had  gained  in  his  concluding  years  that  full  acceptance 
of  his  genius  for  which  he  had  waited,  but  had  not  striven, 
so  long. 


CHAPTER  VI 

VICTORIA 

IN  1868  my  friend  Boyd  Kinnear  stood  as  an  out-and-out 
Radical  candidate  for  Fifeshire,  and  I  went  up  to  stay 
with  him  at  Kinloch  to  help  him  if  I  could  and  at  any  rate 
to  see  the  fun.  Sir  Robert  Anstruther  was  the  Tory  can- 
didate and  I  don't  think  Kinnear,  who  won  the  seat  after- 
wards, thought  he  had  much  chance  this  time;  especially 
as  he  took  the  high  and  mighty  line  of  pure  conviction  and 
would  allow  no  canvassing  at  all.  But  he  made  a  very 
good  fight  of  it  and  told  the  electors  a  lot  of  truths,  the 
greater  part  of  which  they  have  never  yet  accepted. 

And  here  for  the  first  time  I  made  the  close  acquaintance 
of  two  Scotch  marauders  who  have  since  invaded  this  nation 
to  a  fine  tune :  whisky  and  golf.  The  game,  which  I  in- 
vestigated on  the  famous  St.  Andrews  Links,  was,  I  was 
informed,  intensely  exciting,  and  many  of  my  countrymen 
now  think  so.  To  my  mind  it  combines  boredom  and  com- 
plications in  about  equal  measure,  and  for  the  development 
of  human  mendacity,  uncouth  technicalities  and  bad  lan- 
guage it  transcends  any  diversion  I  have  yet  encountered  in 
any  part  of  this  planet.  A  returned  golfer  is  more  addicted 
to  exaggeration,  to  phrase  it  mildly,  than  a  returned  salmon- 
fisher;  while  a  lot  of  golfers  together  are  the  most  unbear- 
able "  shop  "-talking  miscreants  who  ever  destroyed  rational 
conversation  and  rendered  digestion  impossible. 

But  whisky.  Do  you  like  whisky?  If  you  say  you  do, 
I  am  bound  to  take  your  word  for  it,  as  a  matter  of  polite- 
ness ;  but  I  shall  firmly  believe  all  the  same  that  you  drink 

85 


86  THE  RECORD  OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

it  out  of  deference  to  some  Cabinet  Minister  or  to  ingratiate 
yourself  with  a  leading  editor  —  all  of  them  being  Scotch- 
men at  the  hour  that  now  is.  It  is  inconceivable  to  me 
that  anybody  can  really  like  the  stuff.  Taste,  smell,  effect 
on  the  health  are  each  and  all  enough  to  warn  the  judicious 
from  having  anything  to  do  with  such  a  direful  liquor. 
But  it  has  come  South  with  a  vengeance,  and  now  all  over 
Europe  men  and  even  women  absorb  the  pestilent  liver- 
congesting  decoction  called  whisky-and-soda.  I  first  made 
acquaintance  with  this  pernicious  intoxicant,  as  I  say,  at 
Kinnear's,  and  in  my  Southron  ignorance  partook  of  it  in 
the  wrong  way.  Whisky,  hot  water,  lemon  and  sugar :  this 
was  the  headachy  compost  hospitably  recommended  to  me 
by  my  Scottish  entertainers.  I  was  provided  with  the 
materials,  a  big  glass,  a  small  glass  and  a  ladle.  It  was  this 
ladle  that  caused  my  unforgettable  discomfiture.  I  had 
mixed  my  liquor  with  moderation  in  the  big  glass,  the 
smaller  I  took  to  be  intended  for  very  modest  drinkers.  I 
then  saw  at  once  what  the  ladle  was  for:  it  was  meant  to 
convey  the  toddy  to  my  mouth.  I  therefore  began  solemnly 
to  pour  ladleful  after  ladleful  down  my  throat  with  this 
convenient  implement,  when  suddenly  Kinnear  called  to  his 
brother,  half  choked  with  laughter,  "Look  at  him  Charles, 
only  look  at  what  he  is  doing";  whereupon  they  both 
laughed  in  unison  to  my  chagrin  and  abasement.  The  ladle 
was  only  intended,  it  seemed,  to  take  the  grog  from  the 
bigger  to  the  smaller  vessel.  But,  however  mixed  or  how- 
ever swallowed,  whisky  is  a  most  wretched  tipple  and  I 
could  only  wonder  how  Kinnear,  whose  choice  in  wines  was 
always  admirable,  should  allow  his  nationality  to  beguile 
him  into  consuming  this  baneful  spirit  as  if  he  liked  it. 
Tuberculosis  and  cancer,  appendicitis,  lunacy  and  liver  com- 
plaint have  all  spread  with  most  malefic  energy  since  whisky 
became  the  vogue  south  of  the  Tweed. 

But  even  golf  and  whisky  could  not  lessen  my  admira- 


VICTORIA  87 

tion  for  the  beauties  of  St.  Andrews  or  my  enjoyment  of 
the  rude  humour  of  a  Scotch  parliamentary  election,  with 
its  fierce  heckling  and  its  well-educated  ruffianism.  Did 
you  ever  see  a  crowd  of  Scotch  electors  spit  on  their  op- 
ponents? I  did.  In  Principal  Tulloch  and  Professor 
Spencer  Baynes  of  St.  Andrews,  however,  Kinnear  had  two 
most  capable  and  interesting  supporters.  They  used  their 
eloquence  and  persuasion  for  the  tune  being  in  vain;  but 
rarely  have  two  abler  men  left  the  library  and  the  lecture 
room  to  take  part  in  a  political  election.  Tulloch,  in  par- 
ticular, was  a  man  of  remarkable  parts,  and  his  personal 
appearance  —  he  was  strikingly  like  the  most  widely  ac- 
cepted traditional  portrait  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth  —  added 
weight  to  what  he  said.  Baynes,  on  the  other  hand,  was  of 
lighter  mould  and  I  wondered  how  he  had  come  to  be  Pro- 
fessor of  English  in  a  Scotch  University  and  editor  of  the 
Encyclopedia  Britannica.  He  and  Francis  Pigott,  Examiner 
of  Plays,  had  been  great  friends  in  London  as  journalists. 
Baynes  was  at  this  time  full  of  good  stories  about  Pigott 
and  himself,  and  an  anecdote  he  told  of  Pigott 's  greeting  to 
Herbert  Spencer  when  that  philosopher  first  began  his  great 
book  is  worth  repeating. 

Baynes  and  Pigott  were  living  together  and  both  were 
intimate  with  Spencer,  who  not  unfrequently  called  at  their 
rooms.  This  he  did  a  day  or  two  after  the  publication  of 
his  prospectus,  or  syllabus,  or  summary,  of  what  he  pro- 
posed to  achieve  in  his  philosophic  and  scientific  survey  of 
sociology  and  the  universe  generally.  Pigott  was  writing 
at  a  table  when  Spencer  came  in,  and  Baynes  went  forward 
alone  to  greet  him.  Baynes  congratulated  the  philosopher 
heartily  on  the  great  effort  he  was  about  to  make,  said  it 
was  one  that  was  well  worthy  of  his  life's  work  and  added 
that  if  there  was  any  -man  living  who  was  capable  of  ade- 
quately covering  so  wide  and  difficult  a  field,  he  was  the 
writer  specially  qualified  for  the  task.  When  Baynes  had 


88  THE  RECORD  OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

finished  Pigott  arose  and  going  up  to  Spencer  said,  "I  quite 
agree  with  Baynes,  you  will  certainly  carry  out  your  mag- 
nificent programme,  and  exhausted  with  your  successful 
labours  will  retire  to  your  rest.  This  will  be  the  epitaph 
we  shall  have  inscribed  upon  your  tomb,  'In  seven  days  the 
Lord  made  the  earth  and  on  the  eighth  Herbert  Spencer 
wrote  it  down.77  What  Spencer  replied  to  this  is  not  on 
record.  He  had  no  marked  sense  of  humour  and  took  him- 
self very  seriously  indeed.  Talking  one  day  with  Huxley 
on  man  and  life  he  said :  "All  that  can  be  done  is  to  make 
a  mark  on  one's  time  and  then  the  end."  "Never  mind  the 
mark/'  replied  Huxley,  "a  push  is  enough." 

Kinnear  polled  but  700  votes  at  this  election,  and  this 
result  gave  me  an  abiding  contempt  for  our  whole  system 
of  electing  candidates  for  the  House  of  Commons.  There 
was  no  comparison  whatever  in  point  of  ability  and  charac- 
ter between  himself  and  Sir  Robert  Anstruther:  yet  the 
latter  won  by  an  overwhelming  majority.  Proportional 
representation  I  can  understand  and  appreciate,  even  a 
plebiscite  on  great  issues  is  a  convenient  way  of  averting  a 
dangerous  political  conflict,  or  even  of  preventing  civil  war; 
but  a  rough-and-tumble  factionist  appeal  to  a  limited 
electorate,  gerrymandered  up  into  constituencies  varying  for 
an  equal  number  of  members  from  1500  to  50,000  voters, 
in  which  the  result  is  decided  by  considerations  entirely 
remote  from  the  real  vital  interests  of  the  people,  and  is 
largely  influenced  by  the  amount  of  money  spent,  is  a  sys- 
tem of  pseudo-democracy  which  might  easily  in  stirring 
times  bring  the  whole  nation  to  ruin.  At  this  period, 
though  only,  as  I  have  already  admitted,  a  mere  political 
Radical,  I  saw  these  defects  clearly  enough.  But  I  was  not 
at  one  with  Radicals  on  all  points.  Thus  in  this  same  year 
I  expressed  myself  strongly,  contrary  to  the  then  prevailing 
opinion  among  both  Liberals  and  Conservatives,  in  favour 
of  a  close  federation  of  our  democratic  Colonies  with  the 


VICTORIA  89 

Mother-country  and,  although  our  Australasian  colonies 
will  be  far  more  difficult  to  defend  in  the  future  than  in  the 
past,  and  all  our  colonies  certainly  take  a  most  selfish  view 
of  their  relations  to  us,  I  am  of  the  same  opinion  to-day. 

Though  I  had  made  a  little  journalistic  and  literary 
reputation  since  the  Italian  campaign  I  was  still  drifting 
rather  aimlessly  about,  amusement  having  quite  as  much 
to  say  to  my  life  as  writing  or  study.  Not  that  I  am  quite 
sure  that  the  ordinary  beaten  track  of  the  public  school  or 
the  tutor,  the  University,  the  Church,  or  the  Bar  is  quite 
the  course  best  suited  to  give  a  man  an  understanding  of 
the  world,  or  to  develop  such  faculties  as,  perhaps,  unknown 
to  himself,  he  may  possess.  However  that  may  be,  when  I 
had  had  two  years  of  London  life,  of  the  mixed  sweets 
description  I  have  more  or  less  fully  recounted  above,  I 
was,  or  I  imagined  myself  to  be,  in  impaired  health.  So  in 
February  1869  I  sailed  on  the  old  Roxburgh  Castle  of  Green's 
Line  to  go  to  Australia,  for  a  prolonged  tour  through  the 
Colonies  and  the  United  States. 

We  took  one  hundred  and  four  days  from  land  to  land. 
The  only  incidents  of  importance  at  sea,  says  Landor,  are 
the  sun  rising  and  the  sun  setting.  I  remember  a  little 
more  than  that  about  my  voyage  out  to  Melbourne,  and 
three  solid  weeks  frittered  away  in  the  doldrums  on  the 
Equator  I  shall  never  forget.  I  began  to  doubt  whether 
we  should  ever  get  any  farther  and  feared  we  should  stay 
there,  like  the  luckless  victims  of  ships  in  the  Sargasso  sea, 
until,  food  eaten  up,  water  given  out,  a  whole  ship's  com- 
pany of  rawboned  starvelings  would  throw  themselves  in 
despair  to  the  attendant  sharks.  However,  everything  has 
an  end,  even  a  voyage  on  the  Roxburgh  Castle,  and  almost  to 
my  surprise  I  arrived  in  Hobson's  Bay  in  the  same  year  in 
which  I  started.  I  was  at  once  proposed  as  a  member  of 
the  Melbourne  Club. 

I  have  always  remembered  my  sojourn  therein,  off  and 


90  THE  RECORD  OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

on  for  two  years,  with  the  keenest  pleasure.  I  became  very 
intimate  with  many  of  its  members  and  I  saw  from  the 
first,  what  not  a  few  Englishmen  coming  out  to  the  Colony 
failed  unfortunately  to  recognise,  that,  before  the  gold  fever 
and  spirit  of  adventure  drew  them  out  to  Victoria,  many  of 
these  habitues  had  seen  and  enjoyed  pretty  nearly  all  that 
was  to  be  seen  and  enjoyed  of  European  Society.  To  hear 
young  visitors,  newly  landed,  talk  down  from  the  height  of 
their  superior  knowledge  and  experience  to  men  such  as 
Standish,  Capel,  Agnew,  Candler,  Gowen  Evans,  Bunny,  the 
Finlays  and  others  was  really  very  amusing;  though  the 
awakening  of  the  cleverer  of  them  to  the  facts  of  the  situa- 
tion, after  a  few  nights  of  conversation  in  the  smoking- 
room,  was  sometimes  a  little  distressing.  A  study  of  the 
characters  of  Australia  of  that  day  has  never  been  ade- 
quately done.  At  most  sketches  here  and  there  have  given 
a  faint  idea  of  the  interesting  personalities  who  built  up 
these  white  Colonies,  now  doomed,  I  fear,  to  pass,  in  the 
not  remote  future,  to  a  very  different  race. 

A  very  amusing  instance  of  unintentional  lack  of  good 
manners  and  its  rebuke  occurred  in  the  smoking-room  of 
the  Melbourne  Club.  Wood  was  then  becoming  scarce  in 
the  colony  of  Victoria,  and  only  one  large  wood  fire  was 
kept  up  in  the  club  —  that  hi  the  smoking-room.  Round 
this  fire,  naturally,  there  was  every  evening  a  large  gather- 
ing, the  fire  itself  being  the  centre  of  the  semi-circle  of 
members  seated  chatting.  It  was,  of  course,  regarded  as 
very  "bad  form"  for  any  one  to  stand  in  front  of  the  fire, 
except  for  a  minute  or  two,  as  in  this  way  sight  of  the  glow 
was  shut  out  from  all  the  rest.  However,  one  evening  a 
newly  arrived  stranger  from  home,  who  afterwards  proved 
to  be  a  very  nice  fellow,  took  up  his  position  before  the 
blaze,  and,  turning  his  back  to  it,  entered  into  the  general 
conversation.  There  he  stood.  Nobody  liked  to  say  any- 
thing to  him,  though,  of  course,  there  was  a  certain  feeling 


VICTORIA  91 

of  resentment  at  his  behaviour.  All  waited.  Nobody 
moved,  and  the  talk  went  on.  At  last  one  of  the  oldest 
members  of  the  club,  Dr.  Candler,  solemnly  rose,  cutting  his 
tobacco  for  his  pipe  in  the  hollow  of  his  hand,  as  is  the 
custom  of  pipe-smokers  in  those  parts,  and  rang  the  bell. 
The  waiter  came.  " Waiter,"  said  Candler,  " bring  some 
more  wood."  The  waiter  went  out  and  returned  with  two 
huge  billets,  which  he  put  on  the  fire  after  he  had  carefully 
raked  it  down,  the  young  obstructive  having  moved  to  one 
side  in  order  to  enable  this  to  be  done.  When  the  waiter 
withdrew,  however,  he  resumed  his  place  and  stood  there  as 
before.  Within  a  few  minutes  the  fire  had  got  very  hot, 
and  then  Candler  rose  again,  with  the  same  solemn  air  as 
before,  and  once  more  rang  the  bell  and  gave  the  same 
order  to  the  waiter.  This  time  the  waiter,  who  probably 
saw  the  fun  of  the  thing,  returned  quite  laden  with  large 
logs  of  wood,  raked  down  the  fire  and  put  them  all  on. 
Still  the  young  man  returned  to  his  post.  We  others  found 
it  very  difficult  to  keep  our  countenance.  But  now  the  heat 
became  too  great  even  for  him,  and  his  clothes  were  scorch- 
ing. He  therefore  moved  away,  and  then  at  last  a  quiet 
laugh  went  through  that  assembly. 

I  have  been  a  great  deal  about  the  world  and  I  have 
moved  freely  in  many  societies,  but  I  have  never  lived  in 
any  city  where  the  people  at  large,  as  well  as  the  educated 
class,  took  so  keen  an  interest  in  all  the  activities  of  human 
life,  as  in  Melbourne  at  the  time  I  visited  it.  Art,  the 
drama,  music,  literature,  journalism,  wit,  oratory,  all  found 
ready  appreciation.  The  life  and  vivacity  of  the  place  were 
astonishing.  Its  only  drawback  was  rather  neatly  expressed 
by  the  brother  of  Bernal  Osborne,  who  held  some  British 
appointment  in  the  metropolis  of  Victoria.  Asked  how  he 
liked  Melbourne  he  replied,  with  the  drawl  that  was  habitual 
to  him,  "  Immensely.  But  don't  you  think  it  is  a  little  far 
from  town  ?  " 


92  THE  RECORD  OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

I  had  come  out  to  Australia  for  my  health  and  to  see 
something  of  the  Colonies.  I  began  the  latter  diversion  by 
staying  up  country  with  my  Trinity  friends,  the  Finlays,  at 
Glenormiston.  The  story  of  how,  being  fully  entitled  to  the 
possession  of  that  "run,"  then*  father  and  themselves 
eventually  tossed  up  for  it  against  their  malversating  Scotch 
agent  and  won  it,  though,  by  a  curious  arrangement  on  the 
part  of  their  partners,  the  Gladstones,  cousins  of  the  G.O.M., 
the  agent  had  two  throws  to  their  one,  is  quite  an  interesting 
little  episode  in  colonial  life  which  might  be  worth  telling 
if  space  permitted.  Suffice  it  to  say,  that  a  property  worth 
some  £200,000  passed  "by  the  hazard  of  the  dice"  into 
the  hands  of  the  rightful  owner.  Many  years  afterwards 
my  friend  Steuart  Gladstone  told  me  what  fools  he  thought 
his  family  had  been  not  to  take  up  the  same  line  as  the 
Finlays,  instead  of  trusting  to  the  honesty  of  a  wily  old 
Highland  shepherd  who  had  feathered  his  own  nest  beau- 
tifully at  their  expense.  At  any  rate,  I  had  a  very  pleasant 
time  on  one  of  the  best  runs  in  Australia :  hunting  kangaroo, 
rounding  up  cattle,  shooting  snipe  —  for  which  alone  Aus- 
tralia was  well  worth  discovering,  seeing  that  they  are  as 
big  again  and  to  the  full  as  toothsome  as  our  home-grown 
variety;  and  also  with  the  Robertsons,  the  two  famous 
Oxford  oarsmen,  shooting  rabbits  at  Colac. 

Those  were  the  days  when  bushrangers  were  still  plying 
their  vocation  and  rabbits  literally  overran  the  country. 
I  went  out,  I  say,  with  one  of  the  Robertsons  to  shoot  the 
latter.  A  bootless  pastime,  and  as  I  soon  discovered  a 
horribly  dangerous  one.  All  the  bushrangers  that  ever 
infested  the  back  country  would  not  have  scared  me  so 
completely  as  did  that  morning's  work.  We  went  down, 
in  order  to  find  more  rabbits,  close  to  the  Colac  Lake.  But 
where  there  are  rabbits  in  Australia  there  likewise  are 
snakes.  Snakes !  I  never  saw  so  many  snakes  before  or 
since.  And  deadly  reptiles  too.  The  diamond  snake,  the 


VICTORIA  93 

whip  snake,  all  sorts  of  snakes,  most  of  them  poisonous. 
Robertson  had  on  a  pair  of  snake-proof  trousers.  I  hadn't. 
I  shot  more  snakes  than  I  did  rabbits  and  then,  I  am  not 
ashamed  to  say,  I  cleared  out  as  fast  as  I  could  go.  No 
more  snake  and  rabbit  sport  for  me  after  that  experience. 
I  can  imagine  nothing  more  terrifying  than  to  indulge  as  a 
pastime  in  walking  through  short  scrub,  beset  with  reptiles 
as  poisonous  as  cobras  on  every  hand,  and  expecting  each 
moment  to  tread  on  one  of  them  and  feel  his  fangs  em- 
bedded in  your  calf.  It  was  admitted  afterwards  that  I 
ought  not  to  have  gone  where  I  did  in  my  ordinary  apparel. 
I  should  think  not.  If  Robertson  is  still  living  and  reads 
these  lines  I  hope  his  conscience  will  smite  him,  and  that  he 
will  dream  he  has  a  whip  snake  up  his  leg. 

It  was  here,  at  Glenormiston,  in  the  rich  Camperdown 
district  of  Victoria,  that,  as  it  seems  to  me  now,  I  first 
began  to  grasp  in  earnest  the  communal  theories  which  I 
have  since  understood  more  completely.  I  never  could 
endure  the  idea  that  the  land  of  a  country  should  belong  to 
a  mere  handful  of  people  whose  forbears  had  obtained  it 
either  by  force  or  fraud,  or  who  bought  it  from  those  who 
had  thus  acquired  it.  In  Europe,  however,  there  was  some 
historical  ground,  if  not  excuse,  for  this  illicit  appropria- 
tion. In  Australia  history  had  not  begun.  Yet  here,  riding 
about  the  country,  I  found  interlopers  called  squatters,  far 
more  dangerous  and  iniquitous  in  their  social  depredations 
than  the  outlaws  who  held  up  Cobb's  coaches  and  robbed 
banks,  who  had,  with  the  assent  of  a  legislature  completely 
under  their  control,  grabbed  vast  areas  of  land  by  absurdly 
cheap  purchase,  or  still  cheaper  perpetual  lease,  which 
made  them  in  reality  masters  of  the  well-being  of  the  entire 
agricultural  community.  They  had,  to  use  their  own 
phrase,  " picked  out  the  eyes  of  the  country"  by  buying  at 
a  low  price  those  portions  of  the  district  which  commanded 
the  water-supply  and  the  communications  and,  being  thus 


94  THE  RECORD  OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

lords  of  all  they  surveyed,  the  surrounding  acreage  they  used 
for  cattle-ranches.  The  Camperdown  district  was  rather  an 
exception  to  this  system,  as  much  of  the  land  was  so  good  as 
to  be  worth  buying  out  and  out  at  the  low  price  of  £1  an 
acre,  and  holding  on  to  until  population  and  general  develop- 
ment increased  the  value  ten,  twenty,  or  a  hundredfold. 

I  am  bound  to  say  these  same  squatters  treated  me  per- 
sonally so  well  that,  as  a  mere  passer-by  and  stranger  in 
the  land,  I  felt  scarcely  justified  in  attacking  them.  One 
fine  night,  however,  at  the  Finlays,  as  luck  would  have  it, 
the  conversation  turned  upon  the  landownership  of  Aus- 
tralia and  I  blurted  out,  with  the  imprudence  which  I  have 
been  assured  by  all  my  friends,  in  confidence,  is  my  pre- 
vailing characteristic,  that  the  squatters  of  Victoria,  how- 
ever pleasant  individually,  were,  as  a  class,  some  of  the 
most  nefarious  land-grabbers  that  ever  afflicted  a  com- 
munity, and  I  went  on  to  say  that  if  I  had  the  power  I 
would  expropriate  the  whole  lot  of  them  without  further 
ado.  Hence  arose  a  dire  contention,  and  I  was  accused, 
quite  justly,  of  abusing  the  rights  of  hospitality  by  bring- 
ing up  such  an  indigestible  topic  in  so  repellent  a  form 
immediately  after  dinner.  That  I  did  not  dispute.  But 
we  were  in  for  the  argument,  and  the  argument  went  on. 

On  the  general  issue  I  thought,  and  I  think,  I  got  the 
best  of  it ;  but  that  would  not  itself  have  brought  even  one 
of  the  fifteen  squatters  carousing  and  smoking  happily 
round  that  table  over  to  my  side.  Happily  for  me  there 
was  a  hideous  example  close  at  hand.  The  obnoxious  land- 
owner was  a  miscreant  named  Manifold,  I  believe.  He  was 
a  miser,  a  sweater,  a  curmudgeon,  a  land-grabber  of  the 
most  unpleasant  description,  and  he  owned  in  fee  simple 
fully  50,000  acres  of  the  very  finest  land  in  the  district:  a 
much  larger  area  than  was  possessed  by  any  squatter  at 
the  table.  "Do  you  mean  to  tell  me,"  said  I,  with  all  the 
fervour  of  righteous  indignation,  not  difficult  to  feel  and 


VICTORIA  95 

express  on  a  matter  that  did  not  personally  affect  myself, 
"do  you  mean  to  tell  me  that  you  uphold  the  proceedings 
of  old  Manifold,  who  has  got  some  fifty  or  sixty  thousand 
acres  of  the  very  finest  land  in  this  neighbourhood,  who 
doesn't  till  it,  or  improve  it,  or  cultivate  it,  and  absolutely 
cheats  his  stockmen  out  of  their  wages  whenever  he  can? 
Is  that  the  sort  of  landownership  you,  as  honourable  men, 
would  sustain  and  perpetuate?  You  know  as  well  as  I  do 
that  old  Manifold  uses  his  land  to  support  his  politics7'  — 
he  was  a  member  of  the  Legislative  Council — "and  his 
politics  to  uphold  his  land.  He  has  never  done  any  good 
to  any  living  being.  Yet  there  he  sits  like  an  incubus  on 
his  fifty  thousand  acres,  waiting  until  you  other  fellows, 
with  higher  conceptions  of  life,  make  his  property  worth 
millions  by  your  efforts."  Well,  what  with  playing  up  old 
Manifold  for  more  than  he  was  worth,  and  putting  forward 
in  all  sincerity  the  interests  of  the  whole  community  and 
their  children  after  them,  as  of  far  more  importance  than 
the  enrichment  and  aggrandisement  of  a  very  small  class, 
I  actually  succeeded  in  getting  several  of  these  squatters 
to  agree  with  me.  They  even  insisted  upon  putting  the 
question  of  the  resumption  of  all  the  squatters'  land  at  a 
fair  remuneration  for  improvements  and  time  and  energy 
spent  on  them  to  the  whole  of  our  party.  Of  the  fifteen 
squatters  present,  seven  voted  for  this  resolution  and  eight 
against.  And  so  to  bed,  a  defeated  but  not  a  discouraged 
propagandist. 

The  following  morning  one  of  those  dramatic  little  inci- 
dents occurred  to  which  a  disputant  is  inclined  at  the 
time  to  attach  too  much  importance.  Among  the  most 
vigorous  of  my  opponents  before  we  retired  was  a  local 
squatter,  Mr.  Shaw,  known  by  everybody  as  "Tommy" 
Shaw.  I  was  deeply  engaged  in  replacing  the  tissues  ex- 
hausted by  debate  with  a  thoroughly  good  breakfast  —  no 
boiled  tea  and  damper  in  that  bush  !  —  being  chaffed  a  little 


96  THE  RECORD   OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

the  while  by  other  breakfasters  on  the  results  of  our  dis- 
cussion of  the  night  before,  when  li Tommy "  entered.  He 
came  straight  to  where  I  was  sitting,  and  without  even  say- 
ing good-morning,  delivered  himself  thus:  "I  have  been 
thinking  carefully  over  what  you  were  saying  last  night, 
Mr.  Hyndman,  about  the  private  ownership  of  vast  tracts 
of  land  by  squatters,  and  I  have  come  to  the  conclusion 
that  you  were  quite  right. "  Thereupon  a  roar  of  laughter 
and  protest  rang  round  the  table.  This  change  of  opinion 
on  the  part  of  Mr.  Shaw  gave  me  the  majority,  as  I  hastened 
to  point  out.'  The  minority  at  once  started  a  subscription 
to  ensure  my  deportation  from  the  colony  as  a  person  too 
dangerous  to  be  allowed  to  be  any  longer  at  large.  I  heard 
of  Tommy  Shaw  many  years  afterwards  as  a  stanch  sup- 
porter of  Henry  George  and  his  land-nationalisation  scheme 
here  at  home  in  the  Midlands.  It  has  always  seemed  to  me 
very  creditable  to  the  squatters  that  forty  years  ago  a 
chance  majority  of  them  should  take  the  view  they  did, 
when  up  country,  and  on  their  own  lands.  But  things  move 
slowly  in  Australia,  too,  and  not  even  the  Labour  Party  has 
yet  carried  a  vote  for  the  resumption  of  Crown  Lands  in  the 
House  of  Representatives  of  Victoria. 

Returning  to  the  Melbourne  Club,  after  a  very  delightful 
and  instructive  tour  through  the  colony,  I  was  quite  unex- 
pectedly plunged  into  journalism  and  politics,  and  this,  to 
some  extent,  against  my  will.  I  was  thoroughly  enjoying 
this  new  and  fresh  life,  as  well  as  the  friends  and  acquaint- 
ances I  had  made  and  was  making,  sending  a  letter  now 
and  then  to  a  well-known  journal  at  home  but  otherwise  not 
troubling  my  head  about  writing  of  any  sort.  One  fine  day, 
however,  the  manager  of  the  Argus,  who  was  a  member  of  the 
club,  an  old  Lincoln  College,  Oxford,  man  named  Gowen 
Evans,  whom  I  had  got  to  know  well,  upbraided  me  with  my 
laziness,  which  as  I  told  him  was  no  business  of  his,  and  then 
pressed  me  to  write  a  review  for  the  paper  of  a  novel  by 


VICTORIA  97 

Marcus  Clarke,  which  had  just  appeared.  Marcus  Clarke 
was  then  and  for  long  afterwards  the  smartest  litterateur 
in  Melbourne,  and  it  appeared  that  other  writers  of  ability 
did  not  care  to  criticise  his  work.  Evans  persuaded  me 
to  undertake  the  task  and  I  did  it  as  well  as  I  could. 

So  far  as  I  can  remember  it  was  not  a  bad  novel ;  but  it 
described  scenes  in  England  which  the  writer  had  never 
looked  upon,  and  dealt  with  a  life  he  knew  of  only  by  hear- 
say. While  giving  the  author  full  credit  for  its  merits, 
therefore,  I  did  not  hesitate  to  point  out  very  clearly  its 
defects.  I  never  got  greater  fun  out  of  anything  I  ever 
wrote.  As  I  have  said  the  Melbourne  of  that  day  was  a 
city  which  rejoiced  in  anything  that  was  lively  in  the  way 
of  journalism  or  letters,  and  it  was  most  amusing  to  hear 
the  talk  going  on  as  to  who  had  been  so  rash  as  to  criticise 
thus  adversely  the  writing  of  this  promising  and  rather 
prickly  young  Australian.  The  secret  was  well  kept,  and 
when  at  last  it  leaked  out  Marcus  Clarke  and  I  had  become 
excellent  friends.  At  the  end  of  the  review  I  had  said  that 
I  felt  sure  if  the  author  would  turn  his  attention  to  the  life 
and  character  of  his  own  native  country  he  would  make  a 
great  name  for  himself.  I  only  mention  this  now  because, 
years  later,  Marcus  Clarke,  recalling  this  remark  of  mine, 
sent  me  a  copy  of  his  novel  entitled  His  Natural  Life. 

This  is  an  awful  book.  Some  one  speaking  of  it  the 
other  day  said  it  was  a  mere  reproduction  of  official  records. 
That  is  quite  unfair  in  every  way.  The  novel  is  in  its  line 
a  masterpiece  of  horror.  It  is  not  mere  photography:  it 
is  an  artistic  presentation  of  events  so  terrible  in  themselves 
that  it  needed  a  craftsman  of  much  more  than  ordinary 
skill  and  imagination  to  bring  them  within  the  scope  of 
literary  art  at  all.  The  story  is  based  upon  incidents  many 
of  which  actually  took  place  in  those  hells  upon  earth  Van 
Diemen's  Land  and  Norfolk  Island.  So  hideous  were  the 
details  of  revolting  tyranny  and  cruelty  exercised  from 


98  THE   RECORD  OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

above  upon  the  luckless  prisoners  and,  sad  to  say,  by  the 
prisoners  themselves  upon  one  another  and  upon  warders 
whom  they  were  able  to  overmaster,  that  I  believe  the 
original  records  were  deliberately  destroyed,  as  being  con- 
trary to  public  morals  that  such  things  should  ever  see  the 
light.  But  Clarke's  tremendous  book  remains,  telling,  alike 
by  what  it  recites  and  what  it  suppresses,  the  frightful 
truth.  I  defy  any  one  to  read  it  through  without  feeling 
as  he  lays  it  down  that  he  has  been  perusing  what  is  not 
far,  if  at  all,  removed  from  a  work  of  genius.  This  is  the 
more  remarkable  inasmuch  that  Clarke's  turn  seemed  to  be 
towards  light  and  witty  comment  on  the  topics  of  the  day. 
His  Natural  Life  shows  that,  as  I  suspected,  much  greater 
power  than  he  himself  knew  lay  below  the  surface  of  his 
ability.  He  never  did  himself  full  justice.  But  this  novel 
of  his  will  live  by  sheer  force  of  its  terror-inspiring  delinea- 
tions long  after  his  other  work  is  forgotten.  I  am  sure  all 
who  read  it  will  share  my  opinion  as  to  its  power. 

My  connection  with  the  Argus  thus  casually  begun  did 
not,  I  am  glad  to  say,  end  there.  Professor  Hearn,  the 
author  of  Plutology,  was  the  principal  leader-writer  for  that 
journal,  which  then  held  the  same  position  in  Australia  that 
the  Times  under  Delane  held  in  England.  The  education 
question  was  being  forced  to  the  front,  and  Hearn  was  a 
strong  denominationalist,  writing  indeed  all  the  time  in  that 
sense  in  the  Australasian,  which  was  the  weekly  journal  of 
the  proprietors  of  the  Argus.  I  was  asked  to  contribute 
articles  as  leader-writer  in  favour  of  secular  education  in 
the  Argus  in  Hearn 's  place.  As  I  had  always  been  of 
opinion  that  the  only  possible  solution  of  the  problem  of 
education  was  that  it  should  be  gratuitous,  compulsory  and 
secular,  and  of  the  best  kind  for  all  classes,  from  the  com- 
mon schools  up  to  the  university,  with  physical  training  for 
both  boys  and  girls  all  through,  I  gladly  embraced  this 
opportunity  of  advocating  that  policy. 


VICTORIA  99 

By  far  our  most  formidable  opponents  were  the  Catholics, 
who  fought  a  good  fight  on  behalf  of  their  reactionary, 
mind-perverting  principles.  The  Anglicans,  Nonconformists 
and  other  sects  who  favoured  religious  teaching  in  the  State 
schools  merely  followed  in  the  wake  of  the  only  great  inter- 
national Christian  Church.  It  was  a  hot  struggle  while  it 
lasted ;  but  the  whole  progressive  party  in  politics  and  in 
the  press  was  marshalled  on  our  side.  Moreover,  we  were 
waging  a  war  for  clearly  defined  principles;  namely,  that 
public  money  should  only  be  used  for  public  purposes,  and 
that  the  community  at  large  had  nothing  whatever  to  do 
with  promulgating  sectarian  religious  beliefs,  whether  those 
beliefs  happened  to  be  Christian  or  Mohammedan,  Buddhist  or 
Fetichist.  We  won  completely  all  along  the  line,  and  though, 
since  that  day,  many  and  .vigorous  efforts  have  been  made  by 
the  bigots  and  reactionaries  to  upset  the  system,  Victoria  still 
enjoys  one  of  the  best  schemes  of  education  for  the  whole 
people  from  childhood  to  maturity  that  exists  in  the  world. 

I  have  looked  back  ever  since  with  geniune  satisfaction 
to  the  small  part  I  took  in  this  great  work,  and  I  think  it 
was  a  fine  thing  for  my  friends  of  that  time,  Frederick 
Haddon  the  Editor  and  Gowen  Evans  the  Manager  of  the 
leading  Conservative  organ  in  Australia,  to  have  used  its 
great  influence  at  that  critical  juncture  in  favour  of  giving 
a  thoroughly  sound  unsectarian  education  to  the  whole  of 
the  children  of  that  colony.  Both  of  these  men  have  long 
since  joined  the  majority,  but  their  work  lives  after  them, 
and  the  Oxford  man  buried  in  Northamptonshire  and  the 
old  reporter-editor  who  went  to  his  rest  in  Victoria  deserved 
well  of  their  time,  and  I  rejoice  to  be  able  to  pay  their 
memory  now  this  my  little  tribute  of  affectionate  regard. 
All  who  lent  a  hand  in  securing  that  glorious  victory  for 
free  thought  and  sound  education  might  indeed  well  be 
proud  of  the  results  achieved.  Here  in  Great  Britain,  more 
than  forty  years  afterwards,  our  politicians  and  journalists 


100  THE  RECORD  OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

are  still  engaged  in  their  pitiful  squabbling  as  to  how  best  to 
keep  the  children  of  the  "old  country"  ignorant,  or  at  the 
best  half-taught,  in  the  name  of  their  holy  Christian  religion, 
which  is  never  inculcated  in  two  schools  on  the  same 
lines. 

Long  years  after  this,  the  whole  episode  was  brought  to 
my  mind  in  a  rather  amusing  way.     I  was  in  control  of  a 
financial   organisation   in  the   city.     A  wealthy   and   well- 
known  Australian  came  to  see  me  on  an  important  matter 
of  business  connected  with  the  colony  of  Victoria.     After 
we  had  discussed  matters  fully,  and  I  had  come  to  some 
arrangement   with  him,   this  Australian   magnate   became 
quite   friendly    and    communicative.     He   told    me    of   his 
early  struggles  and  how,  by  dint  of  hard  work  and  per- 
sistence in  the  face  of  great  difficulties,  he  had  made  his 
way,  and  had  achieved  by  his  own  exertions  the  enviable 
position  in  which  he  was  now  placed.     He  had  much  to 
say  also  of  Victoria,  its  advantages  and  drawbacks.     Among 
the  latter,  he  put  unhesitatingly  its  methods  of  educating 
the  young.     I  did  not  tell  my  visitor  in  turn  that  I  knew 
something  about  the  colony,  and  he  went  on  with  his  tale 
to,  as  he  thought,  a  thoroughly  sympathetic  listener.     "Will 
you  believe  it,  sir,"  he  said,  "will  you  believe  it,  the  poorest 
miner's  sons  in  Victoria  can  get  as  good  an  education  as 
my  sons,  and  I  have  to  pay  in  order  that  these  paupers 
should   come  out  afterwards   and   compete  with  them  on 
equal    terms?     What    do    you    think    of    that?"     "Mon- 
strous," I  replied,  "quite  monstrous";   and  he  retired  con- 
vinced that  he  had  met  a  most  sensible  person  in  myself. 
I  laughed  heartily,  when  he  had  gone,  and  recalled  once 
more  with  pleasure  the  work  I  had  done  to  bring  about  the 
state  of  things  which  so  angered  my  rich,  self-made  man. 
And  I  read  in  the  newspapers  as  I  went  home  a  vehement 
argument  against  allowing  children  to  be  brought  up  with- 
out religious  teaching,  no  matter  what  might  be  the  short- 


VICTORIA; 

comings  of  their  educational  course  in  other  respects.     We 
are  indeed  a  conservative  people ! 

The  Duke  of  Edinburgh  was  on  a  visit  to  Australia  at 
this  time,  and  I  frequently  met  him  at  the  club.  He  used 
good-naturedly  to  go  out  of  his  way  to  talk  to  me,  and  I 
had  not  conversed  with  him  long  before  I  found  out  that  I 
had  to  do  with  a  very  clever  man.  Mean  in  his  dealings 
with  money,  indifferent  as  to  his  dignity  at  times  and 
places  when  such  carelessness  attained  to  the  proportions 
of  an  indecent  public  scandal,  and  certainly  not  generally 
popular  as  a  personality,  there  could  be  no  doubt  whatever 
as  to  his  capacity,  nor  as  to  his  power  to  make  himself 
agreeable  when  he  chose  to  do  so.  It  became  quite  a  joke 
that  the  Duke  should  chat  so  often,  and  at  such  length, 
with  an  out-and-out  Radical  and  Republican  like  myself. 
So  one  day  when  he  had,  as  usual,  run  away  from  others 
and  settled  himself  down  to  argue  with  me,  I  asked  him, 
point-blank,  why  he  was  kind  enough  to  distinguish  me  in 
this  manner.  " Because/'  he  said,  "you  talk  to  me  just  as  if 
I  were  the  same  as  everybody  else,  and  when  you  don't  agree 
with  me  —  as  in  that  little  matter  of  the  overcharge  for  my 
coach  to  the  Melbourne  Cup  —  you  tell  me  so  plainly.  It 
is  nothing  short  of  an  infernal  nuisance  for  people  to  say  to 
me  always  what  they  think  I  want  them  to  say.  It  bores 
me  to  death.  I  have  come  out  here  to  see  things  and  to  learn 
men's  opinions,  and  it  is  a  reflection  upon  my  intelligence  to 
suppose  that  I  cannot  bear  any  one  to  differ  from  me." 

In  justice  to  myself  I  will  say  that  he  had  no  reason  to 
complain  of  my  sycophancy,  and  two  little  touches  show 
that  he  was  a  better  fellow  at  bottom  than  the  public 
generally  believed  him  to  be.  The  brilliant  barrister,  As- 
pinall  of  Sydney,  was  the  counsel  who  defended  the  Irish- 
man O'Farrell  when  he  was  tried  for  shooting  the  Duke, 
and,  of  course,  regardless  of  court  etiquette,  did  the  very- 
best  he  could  for  his  client,  pushing  certain  points  to  the 


102         :T<HP  R£CORI>  OP  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

front  which  a  less  strenuous  advocate  might  very  reasonably 
have  slurred  over.  His  action  created  quite  a  stir  at  the 
time,  and  was  widely  disapproved.  Nevertheless,  it  pro- 
duced no  unpleasant  effect  on  the  Duke's  mind  whatever, 
and  he  was  careful  to  tell  Mr.  Aspinall  so.  Years  later, 
Aspinall  was  taken  very  ill  in  London,  and  was  confined  to 
his  bed  for  weeks.  The  Duke  of  Edinburgh  heard  by  the 
merest  accident  that  O'Farrell's  defender  was  being  some- 
what neglected.  Quite  unknown  to  the  outside  world,  he 
went  frequently  to  see  the  sick  counsel,  and  did  all  he  could 
to  hasten  on  his  recovery.  The  other  matter  referred  again 
to  myself.  When  I  was  in  Sydney  I  became  ultimate  with 
Mr.  William  Macleay,  afterwards  Sir  William  and  the  hero  of 
a  very  remarkable  expedition  to  New  Guinea,  and  his  wife. 
I  used  to  go  down  to  their  place  in  Elizabeth  Bay  fre- 
quently. When  the  Duke  of  Edinburgh  came  to  Sydney 
for  the  second  time,  the  Macleays  gave  a  grand  reception 
in  his  honour,  and  upon  issuing  their  invitations,  Macleay 
said  he  hoped  I  should  not  be  offended  if  they  did  not  ask 
me  to  come,  as  my  extreme  opinions  were  well  known  and 
might  give  umbrage  to  the  Duke.  I  replied,  "Of  course 
not,"  and  laughed  a  little.  Purely  by  accident  I  met  the 
Duke  going  into  the  Union  Club,  to  which  I  did  not  belong, 
and  he  greeted  me  with  his  usual  cordiality.  The  next 
day,  as  I  believe  is  the  rule,  the  list  of  guests  invited  to 
meet  him  at  the  Macleays  was  submitted  to  him.  After 
looking  it  over  carefully  he  wrote  in  my  name  himself,  to 
the  utter  astonishment  of  my  friends,  who  were  still  more 
surprised  at  the  manner  in  which  he  greeted  me. 

But  I  have  not  yet  taken  my  leave  of  Melbourne,  and 
this  gossip  about  the  Duke  of  Edinburgh  puts  me  in  mind 
of  a  very  brilliant  and  caustic  lecture  delivered  by  Sir 
Archibald  Michie,  then,  I  think,  Attorney-General,  on 
"Royalty,  Loyalty,  and  the  Prince's  Visit."  It  was  one  of 
the  smartest  things  of  its  kind  ever  done,  and  people  were 


VICTORIA  103 

a  little  shocked  at  the  speaker's  freedom  in  dealing  with 
one  so  near  to  the  Lord's  Anointed.  But  what  was  even 
more  interesting  than  this  address  was  a  letter  received 
about  this  time  by  Sir  Archibald  from  Mr.  Robert  Lowe, 
then  at  the  height  of  his  fame.  Lowe  himself  had  been  an 
Australian  statesman,  having  fought  for  the  leadership  of 
the  New  South  Wales  Assembly  with  Wentworth,  who  was 
more  than  a  match  even  for  Lowe.  This  letter  was  written 
by  Lowe  when  Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer,  and  its  con- 
tents were  told  to  me  by  a  well-known  Australian,  Mr. 
George  Collins  Levey,  who  is  an  old  friend  of  mine.  "I 
am  now/'  wrote  Lowe  in  effect,  "in  almost  the  highest 
position  that  can  be  attained  by  any  Englishman  who  was 
born  into  my  rank  of  life,  and  I  believe  I  have  as  much 
weight  in  the  Cabinet  as  any  member  of  it  except  Gladstone 
himself.  Yet  I  feel  that  I  have  no  real  influence  at  all. 
Matters  of  the  highest  importance  are  not  decided  by  us. 
A  small  inner  chamber  of  the  great  aristocratic  families 
arranges  these  affairs  among  themselves,  and  we  have  little 
to  do  but  register  their  decrees."  This  is  almost  precisely 
the  same  thing  as  Lord  Beaconsfield  said  to  me  shortly 
before  his  death,  as  I  shall  later  recount. 

Now  that  I  have  mentioned  Robert  Lowe,  however,  I 
cannot  pass  on  without  saying  a  few  words  about  that 
remarkable  man.  I  used  to  meet  him  frequently  at  dinner 
at  Mr.  Samuel  Laing's,  who  just  after  I  had  taken  my 
degree  went  so  far  as  to  ask  him  to  take  me  as  his  private 
secretary,  on  grounds  which  were  stated  in  a  way  far  too 
flattering  to  myself.  I  shrank  from  taking  the  post  and, 
what  was  much  more  to  the  point,  Lowe  did  not  offer  it 
me,  so  nothing  came  of  that.  But  I  had  several  opportuni- 
ties of  becoming  familiar  with  his  mind  and  conversation, 
and  I  should  think  few  keener  intelligences  ever  entered 
English  political  life.  It  was  wonderful  how  he  made  way 
against  such  strangely  disagreeable  and  awkward  physical 


104  THE  RECORD  OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

peculiarities  as  he  had.  Lowe  was  an  Albino  with  whitish 
hair  streaming  down  over  his  head  like  bleached  thatch. 
His  face  was  rather  ruddy,  which  made  a  strange  contrast 
to  his  hair.  His  eyes,  which  were  very  imperfect  indeed, 
were  always  half  closed,  and  seemed  to  be  pink  behind  the 
lids.  He  peered  rather  than  looked  at  anything,  and  could 
barely  see  beyond  his  nose.  Yet  with  all  these  disad- 
vantages he  began  life  as  a  most  successful  tutor  at  Oxford, 
then  made  his  mark  as  a  politician  in  Australia,  and  became 
one  of  the  most  effective  speakers  in  the  House  of  Com- 
mons. Talking  late  at  night  in  Mr.  Laing's  library  he  did 
himself  the  fullest  justice ;  but  I  confess  I  always  felt,  as  I 
listened  to  his  brilliant  conversation,  that  quite  good- 
naturedly  he  was  on  the  lookout  for  weak  places  in  the 
intellect  of  those  around  him,  in  order  that  he  might  deli- 
cately poke  his  sarcasm  into  them.  Two  of  his  sentences 
in  his  famous  speech  against  the  Reform  Bill  ought  to  be 
remembered :  first  when  he  said  that  having  given  the 
people  the  vote,  it  now  became  absolutely  necessary  "to 
educate  our  masters,"  and  next  when  he  spoke  of  "the 
barren  desert  of  democracy  where  every  mountain  is  a  mole 
hill  and  every  thistle  a  forest  tree."  But  he  will  live  longer 
by  reason  of  the  epitaph  written  upon  him  when  he  was 
still  in  the  full  vigour  of  life,  than  on  account  of  anything 
he  himself  ever  said  or  did.  The  lines  are  still  generally 
remembered,  but  I  really  must  quote  them  again  here : 

Here  lies  Robert  Lowe; 

Where  he's  gone  to  I  don't  know. 
If  he's  flown  to  realms  above, 

There's  an  end  to  Peace  and  Love. 
Should  he  have  sought  a  lower  level, 

The  Lord  have  mercy  on  the  Devil. 

Lowe  himself  was  delighted  when  he  heard  this  epitaph, 
and  at  once  translated  it  into  Latin,  Greek  and  French. 


CHAPTER  VII 

NEW  SOUTH  WALES 

LIKING  Melbourne,  its  climate,  its  clubs  and  its  people  so 
much,  I  have  often  wondered  why,  in  view  of  some  very 
pleasant  and  flattering  proposals  made  to  me,  I  did  not 
stay  there.  Certainly  life  under  the  Southern  Cross  is  a 
good  deal  more  agreeable  than  it  is  beneath  the  Great  Bear 
as  we  see  him.  Perhaps  I  had  the  wander-fit  on  me,  per- 
haps I  felt  with  Bernal  that  it  was  "a,  little  far  from  town/' 
perhaps  I  thought  I  could  do  more  at  home,  possibly  my 
present  wife  exercised  a  determining  influence  in  drawing 
me  back.  At  any  rate,  though  there  was  much  to  tempt  a 
young  man  like  myself  to  remain,  I  went  off  to  New  South 
Wales  and  Sydney,  determined  to  go  on  to  Queensland, 
and  farther  north  in  Australia  still.  The  latter  part  of 
this  intention  I  never  carried  out.  Rockhampton  settled 
that.  This  is  the  town  in  which  I  verily  believe  the  old 
joke  originated  that  a  man  dying  in  that  seven  times  heated 
furnace,  sent  up  from  below  for  his  blankets.  I  got  back 
as  quick  as  I  could.  My  recommendation  to  the  world  at 
large  is:  "If  the  spirit  ever  moves  you  to  travel  to  Rock- 
hampton, take  counsel  of  your  flesh  and  don't. "  Indeed, 
if  you  follow  my  advice  even  Brisbane  will  never  rejoice  in 
the  light  of  your  countenance.  Leave  these  latitudes  to  the 
colonisation  of  the  Chinaman  and  the  Jap  who,  for  that 
matter  are  not  unlikely  to  absorb  the  whole  continent; 
though  I  observe  that  the  Labour  Party  of  the  Common- 
wealth, with  barely  five  millions  of  inhabitants  in  that  vast 
country  all  told,  have  piously  declared  in  favour  of  a  "White 

105 


106  THE  RECORD  OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

Australia."  Unless  I  much  misread  the  signs  of  the  times, 
the  white  man  will  have  all  he  can  do  to  hold  his  own  in 
regions  where  he  is  much  thicker  upon  the  ground  than  he 
is  in  Australia. 

There  was  a  great  deal  of  talk  about  the  coming  of  the 
Chinaman  even  in  1869,  and  many  a  conversation  I  had 
with  Charles  Pearson,  the  author  of  The  Yellow  Danger, 
Gowen  Evans,  Collins  Levey,  and  others  about  the  prospects 
of  a  Chinese  invasion  as  China  got  stronger.  The  subject  is 
too  large  to  deal  with  here;  but  I  have  the  profoundest 
respect  for  that  great  race,  having  only  seen  them  outside 
of  their  own  country  and  employed  them  on  work  for  which 
they  had  not  been  specially  trained,  and  I  feel  confident 
their  influence  on  the  politics  of  the  world  is  only  just 
beginning  afresh.  That,  under  the  competitive  system, 
both  they  and  the  Japanese  can  beat  the  European  in  the 
struggle  for  life,  I  have  no  doubt  at  all ;  but  the  Chinese  are 
the  superior  people. 

I  remember  how  much  struck  I  was,  when  I  was  up  at 
Beechworth,  at  what  the  Chinese  colony  there  did,  though 
they  were  certainly  not  well  treated  by  the  Europeans.  It 
was  announced  that  on  a  particular  day  there  would  be  a 
great  general  demonstration,  with  procession  and  fetes,  in 
order  to  help  to  raise  funds  for  the  support  of  the  local 
hospitals,  where  the  Chinese  who  met  with  accidents  or 
fell  ill  were  treated  with  as  much  care  as  anybody  else. 
They,  like  the  rest  of  the  people  in  this  mining  district, 
heard  about  the  arrangements  and  recognising  that  this 
was  a  matter  in  which  they  were  directly  interested,  they 
determined  that  the  Flowery  Land  should  not  be  poorly 
represented  in  the  display.  They  sent  to  China  for  special 
decorations,  on  which  they  spent  several  hundred  pounds 
in  addition  to  what  they  expended  on  the  spot.  When  the 
day  arrived  they  formed  up  a  procession  of  their  own.  It 
literally  blazed  with  gold  and  colour,  the  great  yellow 


NEW  SOUTH  WALES  107 

standard  of  China  in  front,  and  the  Chinese  marching  in 
perfect  order  behind  dressed  in  the  finest  costumes,  with 
armour,  flags,  and  so  on  most  artistically  arranged  and 
intermingled.  A  huge  dragon,  made  up  of  scores  or  hun- 
dreds of  men  walking  beneath  a  long  carapace,  advanced 
almost  as  if  alive  in  their  midst.  So  magnificent  was  the 
whole  spectacle,  that  the  Europeans  abandoned  their  part 
of  the  show  altogether  as  too  hopelessly  inferior,  and  lined 
up  on  either  side,  cheering  the  Chinese  as  they  passed 
majestically  along.  This  made  a  great  impression  upon  me 
at  the  time,  and  now  that  the  inventors  of  the  mariner's 
compass,  gunpowder,  and  the  art  of  printing  are  waking  up 
to  a  sense  of  their  own  power  and  intelligence  it  makes  a 
greater  impression  upon  me  still.  For  these,  mind,  were 
only  ordinary  Chinese  miners  gaining  a  moderate  livelihood 
by  very  hard  work  and  living  on  frugal  fare. 

That  by  the  way.  The  Chinese  and  their  future  con- 
stitute a  fascinating  subject,  and  I  have  somewhere  an 
article  more  than  half  written  for  the  Revue  des  Deux 
Mondes,  entitled  "Les  Chinois  hors  de  la  Chine. "  I  shall 
probably  never  finish  it. 

This  was  a  period  when  great  "rushes"  of  miners  to  new 
gold-fields  were  by  no  means  uncommon,  and  sailing  vessels 
as  well  as  steamers  were  crowded  with  passengers  anxious 
to  make  their  way  to  these  Eldorados  of  the  south.  Many 
of  these  miners  were  sailors  who,  seduced  from  their  own 
business  by  the  hope  of  making  better  "wages"  by  striking 
it  rich  in  the  alluvial  diggings,  had  become  experts  in  their 
new  calling,  and  were  as  eager  to  reach  the  fresh  discoveries 
as  any.  They  were  glad  enough,  too,  to  lend  a  hand  on 
board,  as  long  as  by  so  doing  they  could  get  an  extra  knot 
or  two  out  of  the  vessel,  and  thus  hasten  their  arrival  at 
their  destination.  The  drawback  to  this  employment  of  the 
old  sailors  was,  that  though  they  would  go  aloft  to  set  any 
amount  of  sail,  they  would  not  set  foot  on  the  ratlines  to 


108  THE  RECORD  OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

take  in  a  reef,  no  matter  what  the  weather  was,  or  how  hard 
it  might  blow.  There  were  therefore  disadvantages  in  ship- 
ping on  board  sailing  craft  thus  manned.  Nor  were  steamers 
exempt  at  such  times  from  unpleasantness  for  ordinary 
passengers. 

A  capital  story  is  told  about  a  trip  made  by  Baron  von 
Mueller,  the  scientist,  and  head  of  the  Botanical  Gardens  at 
Melbourne.  He  had  taken  passage  from  Melbourne  to  the 
north,  and  had  duly  secured  and  paid  for  his  berth,  leaving 
his  belongings  in  the  cabin,  while  he  went  on  deck  to  wave 
his  farewell  to  his  friends  who  were  there  to  see  him  off. 
When  the  steamer  cleared  the  Heads  he  went  below  to  lie 
down.  He  had  been  forestalled.  A  big  rough  miner,  on 
his  way  to  join  a  " rush77 'to  the  Palmer  diggings,  lay  at  full 
length  on  von  Mueller's  berth  fast  asleep.  Little  von 
Mueller  stirred  him  up,  and  in  answer  to  some  good  sound 
digger  language  given  forth  by  his  unwelcome  guest  at 
being  thus  roused  from  his  well-earned  slumbers,  von 
Mueller  said  timidly,  "If  you  please,  sir,  dis  is  my  bunk,  I 
think  you  have  made  a  gross  mistake."  More  digger 
language  of  a  still  warmer  nature  advising  von  Mueller  to 
find  a  bunk  elsewhere,  and  meanwhile  making  certain  sug- 
gestions which  would  not,  if  adopted,  have  tended  to  the 
professor's  personal  comfort.  Von  Mueller  again  remon- 
strated gently,  but  to  no  purpose  whatever.  At  last  he 
said,  "Veil,  sir,  if  you  insist  upon  taking  mein  bunk,  per- 
haps you  would  be  so  very  kind  to  give  me  my  littel  parcel 
of  snakes  from  unter  your  pillow."  The  fellow  turned 
round,  put  his  hand  under  his  head,  felt  von  Mueller's  speci- 
men snakes  wriggling  about  in  their  confinement,  then  made 
one  bolt  out  of  the  berth  and  out  of  the  cabin,  and  rushed 
up  on  deck.  Von  Mueller  possessed  his  bunk  in  peace 
thereafter. 

In  Sydney  I  took  no  part  in  journalism,  literature  and 
politics,  as  I  did  in  Melbourne,  though  I  was  quite  intimate 


NEW  SOUTH  WALES  109 

with  W.  B.  D  alley,  "Jack"  Robertson,  Julian  Salomons, 
and  others,  and  became  acquainted  also  with  Sir  Henry 
Parkes.  Dalley  was  as  bright  and  brilliant  a  companion  as 
I  ever  met,  and  in  the  course  of  the  morning  walks  we 
used  to  take  together,  I  had  a  good  opportunity  of  judging 
of  his  ability.  He  well  earned  the  position  to  which  he 
afterwards  attained.  About  the  capacity  of  Salomons  and 
Parkes  also,  there  could  be  no  question.  But  the  cleverest 
man  of  them  all  was  Robertson.  How  a  half-educated 
politician  with  no  roof  to  his  mouth,  and  certainly  no 
beauty  of  face  or  form,  devoid  also  of  any  great  power  of 
expression,  contrived  to  outweigh  the  extraordinarily  un- 
pleasant sound  of  his  voice,  and  to  hold  his  own  and  domi- 
nate as  Premier  a  by  no  means  easily  handled  assembly, 
was  a  mystery  to  me.  His  influence  in  private  was  as 
great  as  in  public,  and  the  manner  in  which  he  overwhelmed 
the  New  Zealand  Ministers,  Featherstone,  Vogel,  and  others, 
who  came  over  at  this  time  on  a  political  mission,  was  ex- 
traordinary to  witness;  for  they  were  no  fools  either.  I 
have  always  considered  Robertson,  in  company  with  Robert 
Lowe,  one  of  the  most  remarkable  instances  of  a  man  of 
ability  rising  superior  to  physical  drawbacks  I  ever  en- 
countered. 

The  charm  of  Sydney  consists  in  the  marvellous  beauty 
of  its  situation  and  surroundings.  It  is  to  my  thinking  the 
most  lovely  city  in  the  world.  The  inlet  from  Port  Jack- 
son called  the  Paramatta  River  is  quite  perfect;  while  the 
bays  around  with  their  exquisite  semi-tropical  trees  and 
foliage  running  down  to  the  water's  edge  and  crowning  the 
hills  above,  are  unequalled  anywhere  else.  Shipping  com- 
ing right  up  into  the  life  of  the  city,  yachts  sailing  up  under 
the  battery,  a  fleet  of  men-of-war  anchored  so  close  that 
to  all  appearance  you  could  throw  a  biscuit  on  board  Ad- 
miral Hornby's  flagship:  such  was  Sydney  as  I  recall  it. 
I  am  told  it  is  still  finer  now.  But  beautiful  as  it  all  was 


110  THE  RECORD  OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

and  much  as  I  enjoyed  the  place  it  was  a  Sleepy  Hollow 
after  Melbourne. 

And  it  nearly  proved  a  final  Sleepy  Hollow  for  me.  I 
was  living  at  the  Australian  Club,  but  as  they  had  no  bed- 
rooms I  took  a  room  close  by.  I  used  to  read  in  bed  with 
the  light  on  a  table  by  my  side:  a  most  laudable  practice, 
as  all  good  housewives  know.  Of  course,  I  frequently  went 
to  sleep  and  left  the  light  burning.  I  had  done  so  on  one 
occasion  and  was  sleeping  soundly  when  I  heard  a  great 
scuffling  on  the  verandah  outside.  I  jumped  out  of  bed 
and  found  a  policeman  engaged  in  a  violent  struggle  with  a 
big  black  man  who  had  a  dagger  in  his  hand.  The  officer 
had  already  got  the  best  of  it,  when  I  joined  in  and  the 
fellow  was  haled  off  to  custody  duly  handcuffed.  It  ap- 
peared from  the  case  as  told  in  Court  next  morning,  that 
the  constable  had  seen  the  black  man  loitering  about  in  a 
suspicious  way  and,  following  him  up  to  my  place,  attacked 
him  just  as  he  was  getting  through  the  window,  with  the 
weapon  in  his  hand,  to  come  to  relieve  me  of  my  watch 
and  chain  and  other  valuables.  The  culprit  was  certainly 
a  most  unprepossessing-looking  negro,  and  I  had  to  thank 
the  policeman,  I  consider,  for  a  lucky  escape.  The  negro 
was  given  time  to  reflect  upon  the  deficiencies  in  his  moral 
character  under  conditions  which  gave  him  no  opportunity 
for  indulgence  in  his  unregulated  desires  to  possess  other 
people's  property,  and  I  gratified  the  guardian  of  society 
by  parting  with  some  of  mine. 

One  of  the  pleasantest  visits  I  paid  in  Australia  was  to  a 
Run  up  country  at  Armadale,  whither  I  journeyed  with  its 
owner,  Mr.  Dumaresq.  By  this  time  I  had  become  quite 
accustomed  to  Australia  and  its  method  of  life,  and  even 
tried  to  get  from  home  the  means  to  buy  the  Wallabadah 
Run  which  I  could  have  purchased  exceedingly  cheap. 
But  the  Court  of  Chancery  did  not  approve  of  advancing 
money  for  such  a  purpose,  and  my  nefarious  career  as  a 


NEW  SOUTH  WALES  111 

possible  squatter  on  Crown  Lands,  to  the  outrage  of  my 
social  and  economic  conscience,  was  nipped  in  the  bud. 
At  Armadale  I  partook  of  and  enjoyed  the  usual  up-country 
life  in  which  sheep  and  cattle,  cattle  and  sheep,  figured  with 
monotonous  regularity.  I  learnt  enough  about  ranching  to 
know  that  it  is  by  no  means  all  pleasure  and  profit,  and  the 
solitary  life  of  the  shepherds,  in  particular,  awakened  my 
pity.  I  do  not  in  the  least  wonder  that  these  people,  and 
the  stockmen  too,  when  they  get  their  cheque  after  many 
months  of  solitude  in  the  one  case  and  of  monotony  in  the 
other,  too  often  " knock  it  down77  by  a  wholesale  drinking 
debauch  in  the  nearest  township  or  in  the  capital;  being 
horribly  fleeced  and  half  poisoned  by  the  publicans  who 
supply  them  with  liquor. 

Neither  did  the  lot  of  the  "  cockatoo  farmer/7  who  takes 
up  a  small  area  in  the  bush  and  endeavours  to  make  a  living 
out  of  it,  strike  me  as  the  sort  of  life  at  all  suited  to  immi- 
grants from  home.  It  is  hopelessly  uphill  work,  and  the 
frightful  droughts  which  periodically  afflict  Australia,  some- 
times occurring  year  after  year  for  seven  years  in  succession, 
while  they  sweep  away  much  of  the  wealth  of  the  richest 
landowner  and'  squatter,  are  absolutely  ruinous  to  the 
small  man.  It  is,  too,  the  greatest  mistake  in  the  world  to 
imagine  that  Australia  either  was  then  or  is  now  a  good 
place  for  the  very  poor  to  begin  afresh  their  struggle  with 
the  world.  As  Mrs.  Deas  Thompson  said  to  me  in  Sydney 
more  than  forty  years  ago:  " There  seems  to  be  an  impres- 
sion at  home  that  Australia  is  a  haven  of  refuge  for  those 
who  are  in  the  last  stage  of  consumption  or  the  last  stage 
of  impecuniosity.  As  a  matter  of  fact  this  country  is  fatal 
to  both.77  Bitterly  opposed  as  I  am  to  emigration  of  the 
flower  of  our  people  from  Great  Britain,  on  the  ground 
that  this  drain  is  injurious  in  every  way  to  the  mother 
country,  I  am  still  more  opposed  to  it  because  I  have  seen 
what  terrible-  disillusions  await  the  majority  of  those  who 


112  THE  RECORD  OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

go  either  to  Australia  or  Canada,  imagining  that  by  hard 
sober  work  they  can  make  sure  of  a  good  living  for  them- 
selves and  their  families.  In  many  cases  they  are  worse  off 
than  they  are  at  home. 

I  can  imagine  nothing  more  depressing  than  a  long  ride 
or  drive  through  the  Australian  bush.  The  climate  of  New 
South  Wales  and  Victoria  is  as  a  whole  bright  and  cheerful 
and  healthy.  Wherever  also  European  trees  have  been 
cultivated  the  appearance  of  the  country  is  delightful;  and 
the  irrigation  of  good  soil  produces  quite  surprising  results. 
But  to  this  day  I  never  look  upon  a  blue  gum  tree  without 
a  mournful  feeling  coming  over  me.  I  see  again  the  long 
rows  of  these  forbidding  trees  which  I  passed  through  at 
the  stock-horse  canter,  that  I  take  to  be  the  old  amble,  as 
I  rode  down  from  Armadale  to  Grafton  some  two  hundred 
and  fifty  miles.  Hour  after  hour  my  mare  and  I  went 
lolloping  along  alone.  She,  I  believe,  was  as  nearly  asleep 
as  I  was.  The  beauty  of  this  gait  is  that  with  a  deep- 
seated  saddle  and  pummels  in  front  to  protect  the  knees, 
you  need  not  move  an  inch. 

In  the  cool  of  the  morning  this  was  all  very  nice,  and  as 
I  was  travelling  on  a  well-known  and  frequented  track 
there  was  little  reason  to  fear  my  being  "held  up"  by  bush- 
rangers, or  failing  to  obtain  accommodation  at  intervals.  I 
could  look  forward  to  reaching  my  journey 's  end  in  due 
course  and  in  safety.  But  as  the  sun  got  up  and  the  next 
resting-place  was  not  reached  the  intolerable  weariness  of 
those  woeful  gums  oppressed  me.  They  are  the  most  dissi- 
pated-looking trees  I  ever  beheld.  Dante  could  well  have 
represented  them  in  his  Inferno,  in  the  shape  of  drunken 
men,  as  trees,  standing  around  in  sempiternal  penitence  for 
their  orgies  of  the  past.  And  the  wretched  things  with 
their  blotchy  trunks  and  bare  foliage  give  no  shade.  They 
seem  to  take  pleasure  in  deluding  you.  Each  leaf  carefully 
turns  its  edge  to  the  sun;  though,  so  far  as  any  advantage 


NEW  SOUTH  WALES  113 

to  the  sun-baked  traveller  is  concerned,  it  would  make  little 
difference  even  if  their  full  surface  were  exposed  to  the 
light,  as  they  are  mere  apologies  for  leaves  when  all  is  said. 
We  read  much  in  Australian  books  and  Australian  emigra- 
tion pamphlets  about  the  charms  of  the  Australian  climate 
and  the  delights  of  Australian  scenery.  The  exquisite  fern- 
tree  gullies  of  Tasmania  and  certain  Australian  districts  are 
rightly  paraded  as  of  almost  unrivalled  beauty;  but  the 
tree  of  trees  in  New  South  Wales,  Victoria,  and  South 
Australia  is  the  blue  gum,  and  whereas  I  cherish  most  pleas- 
ing memories  of  Melbourne,  Sydney,  and  some  of  the  planted 
and  semi-tropical  regions,  the  nightmare  of  the  gum-tree 
forests  weighs  upon  me  still. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

POLYNESIA 

ONE  night  sitting  in  the  Union  Club  the  conversation 
turned  upon  Polynesia  and  the  South  Sea  Islands  gen- 
erally, and  I  learnt  that  two  or  three  men  present  were  inter- 
ested in  various  enterprises  there.  Shortly  afterwards  I  met 
Archibald  Hamilton  who  had  been  a  lieutenant  in  the 
Queen's  yacht  and  was  taking  a  party  down  to  the  Fijis. 
He  proposed  to  me  to  go  too,  and  in  a  happy-go-lucky 
fashion  I  agreed.  Had  I  seen  the  vessel  we  were  to  embark 
in  before  I  shipped  in  her  I  might  have  hesitated.  For  the 
Coquette  entirely  belied  her  name.  She  was  an  old  topsail 
schooner  of  a  collier,  about  as  broad  as  she  was  long,  which 
Hamilton  had  picked  up  dear  and  had  made  ready  after  a 
fashion  for  taking  a  nondescript  cargo  and  nondescript 
passengers  to  Levuka.  We  were  carefully  tugged  out 
through  the  Heads  by  a  fussy  little  steamer  which  had  on 
board  many  of  our  Sydney  friends,  and  so  out  to  sea  on  this 
queer-looking  craft.  And  although  we  made  about  as 
crooked  a  course  as  could  be  steered  on  the  Pacific  Ocean, 
actually  sighting  the  group  of  islands  called  "the  Three 
Kings"  off  the  Northern  point  of  New  Zealand,  in  Hamil- 
ton's anxiety  to  save  his  wife  from  excessive  sea-sickness 
due  to  a  very  heavy  head  sea,  I  am  bound  to  say  we  had  a 
very  jolly  time  of  it. 

But  I  confess  I  did  not  ship  with  the  idea  that  part  of 
my  duty  as  a  passenger  would  be  to  cook  in  the  galley  in 
heavy  weather.  Yet  so  it  befell.  The  man  who  was  en- 
gaged to  serve  in  that  department  turned  out  to  be  a  regular 

114 


POLYNESIA  115 

"old  hand."  His  capacity  for  getting  at  and  absorbing 
spirituous  liquors  amounted  to  genius.  We  speedily  dis- 
covered his  tendencies  in  that  direction,  which  indeed  were 
not  uncommon  on  board,  and  strove  to  thwart  them.  In 
vain.  Everything  was  locked  up  away  from  him.  He 
contrived  in  some  marvellous  manner  to  fish  up  whisky 
from  the  hold.  This  earth  was  at  last  stopped,  more  by 
accident  than  design,  and  for  twenty-four  hours  our  precious 
specimen  of  a  chef  was  sober.  He  cooked  and  cooked  well. 
Thereafter  he  disappeared.  It  was  thought  he  had  fallen 
overboard  as  a  result  of  this  excessive  sobriety.  Not  a  bit 
of  it.  He  was  found  in  a  state  of  hopeless  imbecility  under 
a  tarpaulin  which  covered  some  baggage,  with  quite  an  array 
of  empty  chlorodyne  bottles  around  him  which  he  had  "  con- 
veyed'7 out  of  the  medicine  supplies. 

Thenceforward,  three  of  us  took  it  in  turn  to  cook  for 
the  cabin.  My  experiments  on  the  digestion  of  my  fellow- 
passengers  were  thought  to  be  fairly  successful.  But  if 
anyone  wishes  to  train  himself  in  the  suppression  of  strong 
language  let  him  offer  to  take  charge  of  the  ship's  galley 
on  a  small  none-too-well-found  schooner  with  bluff  bows 
battering  into  the  sort  of  sea  which  enables  the  craft  to 
make  what  the  sailors  call  "  pretty  good  weather  of  it." 
I  have  refrained,  or  so  I  like  to  believe,  from  speaking  un- 
advisably  with  my  lips  when  rounding  up  cattle  under  a 
broiling  sun ;  I  have  exercised  similar  self-restraint  —  I 
recall  it  with  pride  —  when  dealing  in  all  sincerity  with  the 
impenitent  mule  on  the  mountain  road ;  but  never  was  the 
natural  inclination  of  the  unregenerate  human  to  anathe- 
matise at  large,  under  great  provocation,  kept  down  with 
more  difficulty  than  when  a  sudden  lurch  of  the  playful 
Coquette  sent  Galloway,  who,  like  Hamilton,  was  an  old 
navy  officer,  flying  to  leeward  with  nearly  the  whole  of  the 
dinner  I  had  just  cooked. 

Finally  we  got  to  Levuka,  and  I  wonder  we  did;    for 


116  THE   RECORD   OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

Hamilton  was  several  miles  out  in  his  reckoning,  and  we 
entered  the  Fiji  Group,  by  no  means  remarkable  for  its 
easy  navigation,  as  I  had  occasion  later  to  find  out,  in  a 
tremendous  storm  of  wind  and  rain  with  some  fog  that 
obscured  the  outlook  seriously.  Polynesia  at  this  period 
was  still  one  of  the  uttermost  parts  of  the  earth.  The 
various  groups  were  entirely  under  native  rule  and  most  of 
the  white  men  who  had  taken  up  their  abode  with  the 
tribes,  even  in  Fiji,  prior  to  the  arrival  of  a  few  planters 
with  capital,  were  persons  whose  record  under  other  names 
had  been  adventurous,  not  to  say  criminal,  rather  than 
respectable. 

Levuka  " beach"  was  indeed  peopled  by  a  curious  col- 
lection of  Europeans  of  every  nationality.  Beachcombers 
and  old  hands,  land  speculators  and  old  head-hunters, 
planters,  with  here  and  there  a  pirate  by  way  of  variety, 
made  up  a  strange  set  indeed,  most  of  whom  had  nothing 
to  teach  the  natives  but  their  vices.  White  women  were 
as  yet  few  and  far  between,  but  such  as  there  were  were 
far  superior  to  the  men.  We  had  talked  much  of  this 
medley  of  people  on  the  voyage  down,  but  the  reality  was 
quite  as  novel  to  me  as  if  we  had  never  spoken  of  it.  And 
yet,  strange  to  say,  though  I  wandered  about  the  islands 
for  many  months  and  encountered  all  sorts  and  conditions 
of  men  and  women,  white  and  black,  under  the  most  diverse 
circumstances,  I  never  saw  a  shot  fired,  or  anyone  seriously 
hurt,  in  anger,  though  more  than  once  revolvers  were 
drawn. 

That  was  not  the  impression  I  received  on  my  first  land- 
ing, however.  I  thought  I  was  in  for  a  rough  time.  Nearly 
all  my  shipmates  got  as  drunk  as  drunk  could  be  on  land- 
ing. Poor  Mrs.  Hamilton,  a  bride  of  a  month,  tried  her 
utmost  to  get  her  husband  to  go  back  to  the  schooner. 
All  to  no  purpose,  and  in  my  well-meant  endeavour  to  be 
good-natured  I  spent  a  good  hour  with  her  in  the  ship's 


POLYNESIA  117 

boat  manned  by  an  intoxicated  crew  trying  hard  to  reach 
the  Coquette  on  a  pitch-dark  night,  it  being  almost  impos- 
sible to  steer  a  straight  course,  rowing  as  our  sailors  rowed 
during  that  weary  night.  It  was  altogether  a  nice  intro- 
duction to  island  life. 

The  morning  brought  us  into  all  the  glory  of  the  tropics. 
The  charm  of  the  islands  is  before  me  still.  The  dense 
foliage  running  right  up  to  the  peaks  of  Ovalau,  the  lovely 
colours  of  the  water,  the  spray  of  the  breakers  driven  by 
the  trade-wind  on  to  the  reef,  the  beautiful  cliffs  of  Wakaia 
standing  out  in  the  distance,  all  came  out  into  the  open, 
at  a  stroke,  as  the  sun  burst  out  suddenly  upon  us  standing 
there  upon  the  deck.  Levuka,  a  scene  of  unseemly  drunken- 
ness and  rowdyism  till  the  early  hours  of  the  morning,  now 
lay  before  us  a  peaceful  pretty  village  with  the  native  town 
beyond,  and  as  the  native  girls  laughing  and  calling  shrilly 
to  one  another  came  out  to  fish  upon  the  reef,  and  canoes 
and  boats  began  to  fly  about  the  harbour,  that  delight  in 
the  life  of  these  islands  grew  up  in  me  which  I  believe  all 
have  felt  who  have  been  ready  to  throw  aside  for  the  time 
being  the  thought  of  our  conventional  civilisation,  and  have 
been  content  to  enjoy  the  pleasures  of  mere  existence  with- 
out any  regard  for  the  morrow. 

But  my  introduction  to  the  Fijis  was  not  destined  to  be 
quite  so  free  from  adventure  as  this  my  first  landing.  From 
Levuka  we  went  up  to  Taviuni  and  Koro  to  discharge  cargo 
at  the  cotton  plantations  which  were  then  beginning  on 
those  islands.  We  returned  in  a  heavy  gale  which  speedily 
grew  into  a  hurricane.  A  hurricane  is  bad  enough  to  be  in 
at  sea  when  you  have  only  one  captain  on  board  the  vessel. 
When  there  are  two  captains  then  the  betting  is  long  odds 
on  the  sharks  against  the  humans.  We  had  two  captains 
on  the  Coquette.  Captain  No.  1  was  Hamilton,  who  owned 
the  vessel.  Captain  No.  2  was  a  Swede  named  Thaggard, 
who  had  been  engaged  as  master  when  he  had  made  the 


118  THE  RECORD  OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

islands.  How  it  came  about  I  don't  know;  but  starting 
from  Koro  to  get  back  to  Levuka  with  a  fair  wind  but  a 
rapidly  falling  barometer  we  found  ourselves,  so  far  as  a 
dark  night  would  permit  us  to  discover,  right  in  the  bight 
of  the  great  Wakaia  reef,  whose  horns  projected  far  out  to 
sea  on  either  side  of  us,  rendering  our  escape,  to  all  appear- 
ance, and,  as  shown  by  the  chart,  impossible.  The  only 
chance  was  to  go  about,  itself  a  dangerous  business  in  such 
a  heavy  sea,  and  in  such  a  terrific  gale,  and  try  to  beat  out 
of  the  bight.  Old  sails  and  old  cordage  were  not  calculated 
to  make  this  manoeuvre  less  hazardous.  As  we  talked  we 
seemed  to  drift  closer  to  the  reef  every  second,  and  no 
doubt  we  did,  as  the  rollers  both  looked  and  were  tre- 
mendously heavy,  and  we  shipped  a  great  deal  of  water. 
The  Coquette  was  never  great  at  beating  and  now,  having 
discharged  her  cargo  and  being  in  ballast,  she  was  at  her 
worst,  as  she  was  far  too  light  in  the  water  for  such  a  job 
as  clawing  to  windward  in  a  hurricane. 

I  was  thinking  all  this  and  expecting  the  worst  when, 
as  the  boom  of  the  mainsail  came  over,  by  some  bad  manage- 
ment, it  was  let  go  too  soon  and  broke  short  off  at  the  gaff. 
At  the  same  moment  a  tremendous  sea  washed  over  the 
poop  and  took  me  clean  off  my  legs  and  away  to  leeward. 
Happily  I  managed  to  lay  hold  of  a  firmly  fixed  belaying 
pin  and,  though  my  arms  were  all  but  wrenched  out  of 
their  sockets,  I  held  on  tight  and  at  last  dropped  inboard. 
Those  close  by  who  had  had  their  own  struggle  to  make  head 
against  the  sea  we  shipped  thought  it  was  all  over  with  me. 
Anyhow  my  inevitable  fate  seemed  to  be  only  postponed  for 
a  few  minutes.  With  an  almost  useless  reefed  mainsail  and 
a  reefed  foresail  of  doubtful  standing  power,  it  was  a  bad 
lookout,  so  bad  indeed  that  we  all  gathered  in  the  stern 
waiting  for  the  end,  having  done  all  that  could  be  done. 

Suddenly  I  remembered  that  a  one-legged  man  named 
Hunter,  an  excellent  fellow  and  a  very  fine  swimmer,  ter- 


POLYNESIA  119 

ribly  maimed  though  he  had  been,  was  below  in  the  cabin 
and  a  white  woman  as  well.  So  I  pulled  back  the  hatch  a 
little  way  and  bawled  down  to  Hunter  at  the  top  of  my 
voice,  "We  shall  be  on  the  reef  in  five  minutes,  won't  you 
come  up  and  take  your  chance  ?"  For  answer  Hunter 
called  out,  "Is  it  raining?"  "Yes,"  I  said,  " raining  cats 
and  dogs!"  "Is  it  blowing?"  "Enough  to  send  your 
teeth  down  your  throat."  "Then,"  cried  Hunter,  "I'll  get 
wet  all  at  once !"  So  I  closed  the  hatch  again  and  took 
my  stand  with  the  rest,  wet  through,  miserable  and  hope- 
less. As  I  stood  cursing  my  luck  to  myself  for  having  to 
finish  up  so  young  and  so  unpleasantly,  all  the  stories  I 
had  ever  heard  about  sharks  came  back  to  my  mind.  How 
they  parade  like  sentries,  each  one  having  his  own  beat  up 
and  down  along  the  edge  of  the  reef,  how  slowly  they  move 
towards  their  prey,  how  leisurely  they  turn  over  so  as  to 
take  it  conveniently  into  their  hideous  maw.  It  was  horrible 
to  think  of  and  it  occurred  to  me  and  to  others  by  my  side, 
as  they  afterwards  admitted,  whether  it  would  not  be 
better  to  end  life  with  one's  revolver  rather  than  be  crunched 
up  alive  by  these  frightful  creatures. 

By  way  of  breaking  through  our  sad  reflections,  as  much 
as  for  the  good-fellowship  of  the  thing,  we  now  shook  hands 
all  round  and  wished  one  another  good-bye.  As  we  noted 
the  leeway  we  were  making  we  knew  perfectly  well  that 
nothing  short  of  a  miracle  could  save  us.  And  a  change  of 
wind,  within  the  few  minutes  left  to  us,  sufficiently  strong 
to  help  us  out  of  the  bight,  did  seem  to  be  a  miracle  indeed. 
In  fact,  it  never  suggested  itself  to  any  of  us  that  this  could 
happen.  Our  only  chance  seemed  to  be  that,  as  the  Coquette 
was  drawing  so  little  water,  one  of  the  big  rollers  might 
lift  her  clean  over  the  reef  and  wash  us  all  up  high  and  dry 
over  the  smooth  water  in  among  the  palm  trees.  Indeed 
Captain  Thaggard  proposed  at  the  very  last  moment  to  put 
the  vessel  head  on  to  the  breakers  and  thus  take  this  desper- 


120  THE  RECORD  OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

ate  chance.  Marvellous  to  say,  however,  at  this  very  last 
moment,  when  every  soul  on  board  saw  death  straight 
before  him,  the  wind  did  change  to  just  that  precise  amount 
in  direction  and  power  that  was  necessary  to  get  us  out  of 
our  difficulty.  None  of  us  could  believe  what  was  taking 
place  when,  admirably  handled  by  Thaggard,  who  had 
gone  to  the  wheel  himself,  we  scraped  by  the  lower  horn  of 
the  great  Wakaia  reef  with  what  seemed  to  be  scarcely  100 
yards  to  spare.  That  distance  at  sea  is  no  more  than  ten 
yards  on  land. 

What  struck  me  as  odd  was  that  all  took  the  danger  of 
immediate  drowning  and  worse  so  coolly.  There  was  no 
praying,  no  swearing,  no  lamentation.  But  none  of  us  liked 
it  a  bit.  I  am  quite  sure  of  that.  When  we  had  weathered 
the  reef  and  were  heading  for  Levuka  we  were  still  in  a  good 
deal  of  peril,  but  this,  after  what  we  had  already  passed 
through,  appeared  nothing,  and  we  drank  one  another's 
healths  with  great  satisfaction  and  fervour.  That,  cool  as 
I  may  have  forced  myself  to  appear,  I  was  throughout  in  a 
terrible  fright  is  beyond  question  and  I  am  happy  to  know 
that  my  conduct  on  this  occasion  was  adduced  later  as 
evidence  that  a  non-believer  in  a  future  life  could  meet 
death  as  calmly  as  a  Christian ;  for  most  assuredly,  gauged 
by  my  own  feelings  at  the  time,  I  was  scared  not  only  at 
the  prospect  of  my  speedy  dissolution  and  the  manner  of 
it,  but  I  was  bitterly  angry  at  the  idea  of  being  "  wiped 
out"  so  soon.  When  we  arrived  at  Levuka  we  found  that 
news  had  somehow  been  received  of  our  critical  position  and 
we  had  been  given  up  for  lost.  Several  vessels  were  wrecked 
that  night,  though  the  hurricane  was  nothing  as  compared 
with  that  which  devastated  the  group  the  year  before.  At 
any  rate  it  was  quite  enough  for  me.  I  have  had  several 
narrow  escapes  in  the  course  of  my  life,  but  none  of  them 
left  such  a  permanent  impression  upon  me  as  this  "  close 
call"  with  the  sharks  off  Wakaia. 


POLYNESIA  121 

I  wonder  whether  all  men  have  the  same  personal  hatred 
of  sharks  I  found  among  the  sailors  I  encountered  in  Poly- 
nesia. With  some  it  amounts  to  a  species  of  mania.  The 
remembrance  of  one  adventure  with  them  also  quite  de- 
stroyed the  nerve  of  a  very  fine  young  Englishman,  who 
left  the  Islands  in  consequence.  He  had  come  from  the 
great  island  of  Vanua  Levu  in  an  open  boat  with  two  other 
white  men  and  three  natives.  It  was  blowing  hard  and  the 
sea  was  rough  outside  the  reef.  So  Boyd,  who  was  a  very 
good  'seaman,  sat  up  steering  all  night,  while  his  friends, 
Cameron,  the  owner  of  the  boat,  and  another  slept.  There 
was  a  full  moon,  and  it  was  one  of  those  beautiful  fresh 
nights  frequently  enjoyed  in  the  Islands  after  the  rainy 
season.  Nothing  could  be  more  delightful,  though  as  hour 
after  hour  passed  Boyd  naturally  got  very  weary  and 
sleepy.  At  last,  after  twelve  hours  of  continuous  watchful- 
ness and  care,  the  boat  was  in  smooth  water,  inside  the 
Ovalau  reef,  where,  protected  by  the  mountains,  there  was 
comparatively  little  wind.  Boyd,  therefore,  gave  up  the 
tiller  to  Cameron,  saying  as  his  last  words,  "  Gusts  will 
come  down  the  gullies:  whatever  you  do  don't  fasten  the 
sheet,"  and  then  fell  fast  asleep. 

He  woke  suddenly  to  find  the  boat  careened  over;  guess- 
ing what  had  occurred  he  cut  the  sheet  which  had  been 
foolishly  elected  by  Cameron  with  his  jack-knife.  It  was 
too  late.  The  boat  sank,  and  all  began  to  swim  for  their 
lives.  The  three  natives  soon  forged  ahead,  and  Boyd,  who 
was  considered  a  fine  swimmer  for  a  white  man,  was  in 
advance  of  his  two  careless  friends.  As  they  swam  on  he 
heard  a  shriek  behind  him.  One  of  them  had  been  taken 
down  by  a  shark.  On  he  went,  striking  out,  if  possible, 
more  vigorously  than  before.  Then  a  second  shriek  of  pain 
and  horror  from  behind  him.  Another  gone  to  the  voracious 
creatures.  He  was  now  swimming  alone,  for  the  natives 
were  a  long  way  off  by  this  time,  and  every  ripple  he  heard 


122  THE  RECORD  OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

in  the  water,  every  swish  of  the  wind  that  went  by,  he 
thought  was  the  rush  of  a  shark's  fin  through  the  waves, 
or  the  sound  of  the  creature  turning  over  to  grip  him.  A 
whole  mile  of  this  almost  unbearable  anxiety  did  he  undergo 
until  finally,  worn  out  with  exertion  and  mental  strain,  he 
had  just  strength  enough  to  drag  himself  to  the  shallow 
water  whence  the  natives  quickly  pulled  him  out.  He  was 
indeed  luckily  out  of  it;  but,  as  I  say,  his  nerves  were  so 
shaken  for  the  time  being  that  he  could  not  stand  sailing 
again  in  an  open  boat,  and  he  speedily  left  for  New  Zealand. 

Another  shark  incident  of  a  still  more  exciting  character 
which  occurred  about  the  same  time  affords  remarkable 
proof  of  the  loyalty  and  discipline  of  the  natives  towards 
their  chiefs.  Tui  Levuka,  the  chief  of  the  island  of  Ovalau, 
was  out  in  a  big  double  canoe  when  a  sudden  storm  came 
on  and  it  capsized  in  a  part  known  to  be  infested  with 
sharks.  Immediately  Tui  Levuka  and  the  crew  were  thrown 
into  the  water  the  natives  made  a  circle  round  their  chief, 
joining  hands  and  keeping  themselves  afloat  with  their  legs 
while  he  swam  about,  inside  the  ring  so  formed,  quite 
comfortably. 

A  shriek  and  a  groan,  and  down  goes  one  native.  The 
two  next  to  him  release  their  hands  and  join  them  again 
over  the  empty  place.  Another  is  taken  in  the  same  way, 
and  again  the  circle  is  completed  as  if  none  were  missing. 
A  third  disappears,  and  once  more  silently,  and  as  it  were 
automatically,  the  narrowing  circle  is  reconstituted  with 
Tui  Levuka  still  safe  in  the  midst.  " Another  for  Hector" 
was  never  replied  to  and  acted  upon  under  more  gruesome 
circumstances,  for  the  men  left  could  hear  the  swirl  of  the 
water  as  successive  comrades  disappeared  below  the  surface 
and  their  blood  washed  up  around  the  circle  as  they  were 
devoured.  Finally,  after  this  had  been  going  on  for  a  con- 
siderable time,  man  after  man  going  down  in  turn,  other 
native  canoes  came  up  and  took  Tui  Levuka  and  his  much 


POLYNESIA  123 

reduced  band  of  followers  on  board.  Only  twenty-seven 
out  of  the  original  number  of  forty-five  remained.  The 
whole  occurrence  made  no  impression  on  the  Fijians,  nor 
were  the  survivors  thought  to  have  done  anything  unusual. 

At  this  time  there  were  not  more  than  1000  white  men 
all  told  in  the  Fijian  group.  But,  with  the  influence  of  the 
Wesleyan  missionaries,  the  constant  visits  of  men  of  war, 
and  the  persistent  assertion  of  authority  by  Mr.  Thurston, 
the  British  Consul,  the  whites  had  virtual  control  even  then ; 
though  Thakombau,  the  chief  of  Mbau,  was  regarded  as  the 
superior  Chief  or  King  and  other  great  Chiefs  such  as  Tuitha- 
kau  of  Vanua  Levu  and  Maafu  of  the  Windward  Islands 
were  virtually  independent.  What  struck  me  most  un- 
pleasantly then,  and  seems  even  more  abominable  now, 
was  the  manner  in  which  this  handful  of  white  men  carried 
on  their  usurped  rule.  Nothing  could  have  been  more  high- 
handed or  in  many  cases  more  unjust.  Flogging  was  always 
going  on.  If  a  native  refused  to  work  he  was  flogged.  If 
he  was  insolent  or  threatened  a  white  man  he  was  flogged. 
If  he  got  very  drunk  he  was  fined  and  flogged.  If  he  in- 
dulged in  illicit  amours  he  was  flogged.  If  he  stole  some 
trifle  he  was  flogged. 

When,  too,  superadded  to  this  epidemic  of  castigation 
there  flourished  all  round  the  narrow,  loveless  cant  of  Wes- 
leyan Christianity  which,  not  content  with  suppressing  really 
objectionable  acts,  such  as  cannibalism,  obscene  devil- 
dances,  the  launching  of  big  canoes  over  men's  stomachs, 
the  killing  of  a  man  to  each  post  in  a  chief's  hut,  and  the 
placing  of  his  body  under  it,  the  burying  alive  of  old  and 
worn-out  men  and  women  as  useless  mouths,  which  were 
common  events  among  the  polite,  and  in  their  way  cultured, 
Fijians  before  the  coming  of  the  missionaries  —  when  not 
content  with  putting  a  stop  to  these  and  other  terrible 
doings,  the  Wesley ans  did  away  with  dancing  and  enjoy- 
ment altogether,  and  replaced  the  ancient  fetichism,  with 


124  THE  RECORD  OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

its  unbridled  lust  and  bloody  ceremonies,  by  a  terribly  woe- 
begone Calvinistic  creed  that  took  all  the  life  and  jollity 
out  of  the  people  who  accepted  it  in  earnest,  they  did  a 
work  of  doubtful  beneficence. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  however,  the  old  Fijian  habits 
naturally  revolted  the  ideas  of  less  intolerant  folk  than 
those  brought  up  in  the  straiter  seat  of  Nonconformist 
asceticism,  skin  deep  though  that  asceticism  was  in  many 
cases.  Mr.  Lorimer  Fison,  a  Wesleyan  missionary  on  the 
Rewa  river,  whose  studies  in  native  social  customs  and 
relationships  were  acknowledged  by  the  famous  Lewis  Mor- 
gan (and  who,  by  the  way,  first  called  my  attention  to  that 
great  writer  early  in  1870)  as  well  as  rewarded  many  years 
later  by  the  grant  of  a  pension  from  the  British  Government, 
told  me  that  he  had  the  very  greatest  difficulty  in  finding 
any  legends  and  stories  of  the  old  time  which  were  at  all 
decent  or  fit  for  publication.  And  Fison  was  a  man  of 
learning  and  distinction,  quite  different  from  the  ordinary 
run  of  Wesleyan  missionaries  in  those  parts.  He  liked  the 
happy  childlike  disposition  of  the  negroid  races  around  him, 
and  understood,  I  think,  that  there  was  a  more  excellent 
way  with  them  than  that  which  even  he  was  compelled  by 
his  superiors  and  paymasters  to  adopt. 

I  must  admit  the  politeness  and  consideration  of  the 
Fijians  in  all  the  islands  under  ordinary  circumstances,  the 
charm  of  their  arts  and  industries,  and  their  general  merri- 
ment when  unsoured  and  unspoiled  by  Christianity,  con- 
trasted strangely  with  some  other  of  their  habits  and  cus- 
toms. It  was  almost  impossible  to  believe  that  the  men 
and  women  and  boys  and  girls  who  would  come  out  with 
food  in  their  hands  and  press  you  to  partake  of  their  simple 
hospitality  as  you  passed  through  the  bush,  acting  through- 
out with  the  most  winning  courtesy,  were  of  the  same  breed, 
and  indeed  in  some  cases  the  very  same  persons,  as  those 
who  would  take  part  in  a  treacherous  cannibal  raid  or  revel 


POLYNESIA  125 

in  the  obscene  orgies  of  the  unrestrained  devil-dance.  Yet 
upwards  of  100  natives  were  killed  and  many  of  them  eaten 
(a  few  of  the  bodies  being  sent  as  presents  to  neighbouring 
tribes)  close  to  where  I  was  staying  in  Nandi  Bay ;  the  hill- 
tribes  of  Vili  Levu  having  raided  a  prosperous  village  armed 
with  guns  which  the  coast  tribes  were  prevented  by  the 
whites  from  purchasing.  I  also  saw  one  of  the  ancient 
devil-dances  performed  in  full  by  one  of  the  unchristianised 
tribes  on  a  fine  moonlight  night,  with  torches  flashing  about 
in  the  surrounding  bush,  and  a  weird  and  unseemly  scene 
it  was.  This,  and  a  war  demonstration  before  Thakombau 
when  hostilities  threatened,  were  the  most  imposing  displays 
I  witnessed.  The  latter  was  melodramatic  enough.  The 
Fijians  are  not  at  all  a  warlike  people,  and  they  seldom  run 
any  serious  risks;  but  as  boasters  they  stand  in  the  front 
rank,  and  when  I  got  to  know  the  language  I  used  to  enjoy 
mightily  their  mendacious  glorifications  of  their  prowess. 

But  I  cannot  leave  this  subject  of  missionaries,  for  whom 
as  a  class  I  have  little  admiration  —  such,  as  a  rule,  is  their 
bigotry  and  lack  of  appreciation  and  sympathy  for  any 
creed  or  form  of  society  other  than  their  own  —  without 
drawing  a  contrast  between  two  different  forms  of  proselytis- 
ing for  Christianity  as  I  saw  them.  The  Wesleyan  mission- 
aries of  those  days  traded  largely  on  their  own  account,  and 
some  of  them  made  considerable  private  fortunes  in  this 
way.  Their  position  as  men  of  God  obviously  helped  them 
materially  in  their  capacity  as  men  of  Mammon.  It  was 
difficult  for  a  poor  unlettered  native,  with  the  fear  of  the 
Christian  bake-house  after  death  ever  before  him,  to  hold 
his  own  in  a  bargain  with  the  great  white  medicine  men 
who  might  in  the  harsh  hereafter  temper  or  intensify  the 
heat  to  his  shorn  skin. 

Mr.  Moore  was  undoubtedly  the  Wesleyan  missionary 
above  all  the  rest  who  understood  Fijians  and  their  lan- 
guage best.  His  translation  of  the  Pilgrim's  Progress  into 


126  THE  RECORD  OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

Fijian  is  a  perfect  masterpiece,  a  literary  triumph,  which 
would  have  brought  the  highest  credit  to  its  author  had 
Fijian  been  a  well-known  tongue.  He  was  also  an  excellent 
organiser  and  a  first-rate  man  of  business,  accessible,  good- 
humoured,  and  shrewd.  To  him  old  Jim  Dyer,  the  cleverest 
and  not  the  most  scrupulous  of  the  "  beachcombers "  and 
poor  whites  who  had  taken  up  their  quarters  in  the  Fijis  in 
the  early  days. 

This  James  Dyer  had  become  owner  of  a  small  island  on 
Rewa  river  duly  granted  to  him  by  chiefs  and  tribes  — 
there  was  no  private  property  in  land  under  native  usages 
—  to  which  he  attached,  or  pretended  to  attach,  great 
value.  For  some  reason  Mr.  Moore  was  anxious  to  buy  it. 
They  came  to  a  bargain,  and  all  Dyer's  right,  title,  and 
interest  in  this  unnamed  island  became  Mr.  Moore's  in  return 
for  a  handsome  amount  of  " trade" ;  which  "trade,"  scandal 
said,  included  certain  weapons  of  defence,  with  the  means 
of  loading  and  discharging  the  same,  that  might  seem  to  a 
mere  onlooker  scarcely  fitting  matter  of  barter  from  a  man 
of  Moore's  sanctity  to  a  person  of  Dyer's  not  even  doubtful 
record  —  notoriously  "Jim"  had  been  a  head-hunter  in  the 
days  that  were  earlier  and  when  hair  was  dressed  curlier. 
So  Dyer  went  away  satisfied  and  Moore  entered  into  pos- 
session of  his  eyot.  A  few  months  passed,  the  rainy  season 
followed  and  the  Rewa  river  rushed  down  in  full  flood. 
As  a  result,  the  island  moved  a  hundred  yards  or  so  down 
stream.  This  occasioned  Moore  some  anxiety.  If  his  newly 
acquired  property  began  to  float  off  in  this  way  there  was 
no  saying  where  it  would  bring  up.  The  valuable  "trade" 
which  he  had  handed  over  to  Dyer  was  evidently  something 
worse  than  in  jeopardy.  The  missionary,  however,  be- 
thought him  that  he  might  possibly  gain  an  advantage  by 
an  appeal  to  Dyer's  instincts  of  fair-play.  He  sent  for  the 
old  beachcomber  and  this  was  the  talk  between  them:  — 
"This  is  a  serious  matter  about  that  island  you  sold  me, 


POLYNESIA  127 

Dyer,  very  serious;  it  seems  to  me  to  be  on  its  way  down 
the  river,  and  may  disappear  altogether  before  it  arrives  at 
the  sea.  Probably  it  came  from  many  miles  higher  up. 
What  do  you  know  about  it?  ,  What  are  you  prepared  to 
do?  I  certainly  think  you  ought  to  hand  me  back  the 
trade  I  paid  you,  or  its  equivalent."  To  this  Dyer  replied. 
"The  island  was  always  an  island  in  that  place  as  long  as  I 
have  known  it  and  I  don't  see  that  it  is  not  just  as  good 
where  it  is,  as  it  was  where  it  was.'7  "Yes,"  said  Moore, 
"that  is  all  very  well,  but  there  is  no  certainty  it  will  stay, 
or  that  it  won't  wash  away  altogether.  You  cannot  call 
this  a  fair  deal,  and  you  ought  to  repay  me."  "No,  really, 
I  can't  do  that.  But  you  say  the  property  is  on  the  move  ?" 
"Undoubtedly  it  is."  "Well,  of  course,  that's  very  hard 
on  you.  I  admit  that.  But  I  don't  see  my  way  to  pay 
you  back  your  trade :  a  bargain's  a  bargain.  I'll  tell  you, 
however,  what  I  will  do."  "What's  that?"  asked  Moore 
eagerly.  "If  you  will  deed  the  island  back  to  me,  I  will 
make  out  shifting  leases  to  you  and  you  can  follow  it  up !" 
Moore  went  away  furious  and  believing  that  Dyer  was  well 
aware  that  the  "island"  was  merely  a  mass  of  mud  on  the 
move. 

A  very  different  type  of  man  from  Mr.  Moore  was  the 
Catholic  Jesuit  missionary  Pere  Br6heret.  He  had  no 
political  influence,  he  never  traded,  he  did  most  of  his  work 
with  his  own  hands,  he  trained  the  Fijians  himself  in  direc- 
tions where  such  training  was  beneficial,  the  Catholic  Chapel 
as  well  as  the  boats  for  his  visitations  he  built  himself  — 
altogether  an  apostolic  figure  of  a  man,  toiling  away  year 
in  and  year  out  among  his  flock,  without  hope  of  reward 
or  publicity,  content  to  pass  away  his  days  in  endeavouring 
to  make  life  more  pleasurable  here,  and  life  more  enjoyable 
too,  as  he  believed,  hereafter,  by  inculcating  the  truths  of 
his  mild  Christian  morality  into  his  people.  It  was  notice- 
able that  his  Catholicism  had  adapted  itself  much  better 


128  THE  RECORD  OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

than  the  straitlaced  Puritanism  of  the  Wesleyans  to  the 
habits  of  the  people,  and  that  there  was  among  the  Fijian 
Catholics  little  or  none  of  that  sour  self-righteousness  and 
severe  hypocrisy  observable  among  the  Wesleyans.  Pere 
Br6heret's  converts  danced  and  sang  and  made  merry  and 
enjoyed  life  harmlessly,  much  as  they  had  done  before, 
and  I  could  not  see  that  they  had  thrown  off  the  objection- 
able features  of  savage  life  any  less  than  the  others. 

I  dislike  and  even  fear  the  Catholic  Church,  as  an  insti- 
tution devoted  to  the  misguiding  of  human  intelligence  into 
the  jungle  of  superstition  and  mystery,  though  I  admire  it 
as  a  splendid  international  organisation,  with  its  great  army 
of  devoted  celibate  clergy ;  but  for  those  of  its  missionaries 
I  have  seen  among  peoples  at  an  early  stage  of  develop- 
ment I  have  nothing  but  sincerest  regard.  And  of  all  of 
them  the  man  whose  humility,  geniality,  industry,  and  self- 
sacrifice  were  most  noticeable  was  Pere  Breheret  of  the 
Rewa  river,  whose  methods  appeared  to  me  to  be  the  highest 
type  of  them  all.  I  heard,  years  afterwards,  that  his  ser- 
vices were  not  properly  appreciated  by  his  own  Church, 
and  he  must  now  be  long  since  dead;  but  it  pleases  me, 
even  so,  to  lay,  as  a  passing  stranger,  my  little  tribute  of 
respect  and  regard  on  the  grave  of  that  saintly  and  lovable 
old  man. 

In  coming  up  to  Levuka  on  the  ill-fated  Marion  Rennie, 
I  had  another  of  those  narrow  escapes  from  shipwreck  which 
lent  excitement  and  variety  in  those  days  to  a  trip  round 
the  Islands.  The  vessel  had  lately  returned  from  the  New 
Hebrides,  and  was  carrying  what  was  euphemistically  called 
"labour"  to  the  windward  plantations.  A  steady  trade- 
wind  was  blowing,  the  imported  natives  were  lying  more  or 
less  comfortably  about  on  the  deck,  the  course  had  been 
carefully  laid,  and  a  native  from  the  island  of  Rotumah  — 
first-rate  seamen  they  are  and,  by  the  way,  exactly  like 
Japanese  —  was  told  off  to  steer  through  the  night.  Then 


POLYNESIA  129 

the  captain  got  drunk,  the  mate  got  drunk,  two  other  white 
men  on  board  got  drunk,  all  retiring  to  their  bunks.  A 
Swedish  sailor  named  Gill,  with  a  master's  certificate,  the 
Rotumah  boy,  and  myself  were  consequently  left  in  charge. 

It  was  a  fine  night  but  very  dark,  and  Gill  and  myself 
were  walking  up  and  down  the  deck  talking,  with  every 
plain  sail  set,  drawing  well,  and  the  schooner  making  good 
way  through  the  water,  when  of  a  sudden  I  thought  I 
heard  the  roar  of  the  reef  —  my  ears  had  by  this  time  been 
trained  to  be  pretty  sharp  in  this  direction  —  sounding  un- 
pleasantly near.  Down  we  went  to  the  cabin  after  looking 
at  the  compass,  and,  having  made  out  from  the  chart  that 
we  were  perfectly  safe,  went  up  again  and  began  once  more 
to  parade  the  deck.  Now,  however,  I  had  no  doubt  about 
it,  the  sound  of  the  breakers  convinced  me  we  must  be 
getting  very  close  to  the  reef  indeed.  So  certain  was  I 
that  we  were  in  danger  that  Gill  himself  was  impressed, 
and  he  told  the  Rotumah  boy  to  give  the  wheel  to  me  and 
run  up  to  the  fore-yard.  He  had  scarcely  got  half  way  up 
the  rigging  when  he  called  out  " breakers  right  ahead." 
Happily,  the  vessel  was  very  handy,  and  with  Gill  and  the 
Rotumah  lad  thoroughly  up  to  their  work,  she  was  about 
in  no  time.  But  as  we  came  round  we  could  see,  dark  as  it 
was,  the  white  foam  of  the  breakers  on  the  reef  apparently 
just  over  the  taffrail.  Not  a  human  being  on  board  was 
awake  but  ourselves,  and  not  until  morning  did  we  discover 
that  the  powerful  current  which  runs  here  had  set  us  in 
several  miles  to  the  shore. 

In  spite  of  this  alarming  experience  I  was  foolhardy 
enough  to  try  to  catch  this  same  Marion  Rennie,  when  she 
was  passing  Nandi  Bay  on  another  trip  to  the  New  Heb- 
rides. A  splendid  crew  of  Tokalau  boys  from  the  Line 
Islands  did  their  utmost  to  head  her  off,  and  bring  her  to, 
in  order  to  take  me  on  board ;  but,  well  as  they  rowed,  they 
were  unsuccessful  in  their  efforts,  and  I  returned  much  dis- 


130  THE  RECORD  OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

appointed  —  for  I  wanted  to  see  with  my  own  eyes  how 
this  " labour"  was  really  recruited  —  to  my  planter  friends 
on  Viti  Levu.  If  I  had  gone  I  should  never  have  returned. 
The  vessel  was  attacked  by  the  natives  of  the  island  of 
Mullaculah  and  every  man  on  board  killed.  From  what  I 
learned  afterwards  I  think  they  deserved  their  fate.  General 
loose  living,  unscrupulous  trickery,  and  frequently  downright 
brutality  were  the  characteristics  of  these  labour  hunters  at 
this  time.  There  were  honourable  exceptions,  but  they  were 
few  and  far  between.  So  I  was  well  out  of  that  trip. 

I  have  often  observed  that  when  Englishmen  of  ap- 
parently decent  character  and  social  training  are  removed 
from  the  influence  of  their  early  surroundings,  and  are 
quite  free  from  the  fear  of  Mrs.  Grundy,  many  of  them  do 
things  which  nobody  would  believe  it  to  be  possible  for 
them  to  do  beforehand.  This  is  not  confined  to  Polynesia : 
it  is  true  likewise  of  unsettled  Australia  and  the  West  of 
America  and  not  wholly  unknown  even  on  the  Continent  of 
Europe.  It  is  this  fact  I  suppose  which  has  gained  for  us 
as  a  nation  so  unenviable  a  reputation  for  hypocrisy.  The 
most  striking  case  of  utter  indifference  to  all  rules  of  decent 
behaviour  I  ever  remember  was  that  of  the  manager  of  one 
of  the  great  banks  in  Sydney,  a  person  renowned  for  his 
piety  in  that  city,  and  filling  a  high  and  responsible  position 
in  his  own  religious  community. 

This  worthy  landed  at  Levuka  in  a  black  frock  coat  and 
a  shiny  top  hat,  —  a  garb  unknown  on  "the  beach"  in  those 
days,  —  and  expressed  himself  at  first  as  being  much  horri- 
fied at  what  he  saw  going  on,  which  perhaps  was  not  al- 
together surprising.  Within  a  week  he  had  stripped  off  his 
conventional  manners  and  morality  as  easily  and  almost 
as  quickly  as  he  divested  himself  of  his  tall  hat  and  his 
black  coat.  The  " beach"  first  laughed,  and  then  won- 
dered. It  was  my  bad  luck  to  go  with  him  on  a  trip  with 
a  party  to  the  island  of  Mokengai  belonging  to  the  leading 


POLYNESIA  131 

storekeeper  of  the  group,  named  Hennings,  who  took  us 
over  in  his  schooner.  There  were  on  board  all  sorts  and 
conditions  of  men;  among  them  Mackay,  the  famous  Aus- 
tralian explorer,  and  an  old  sea-captain  named  Browning, 
who  had  passed  through  terrible  adventures  and  seen  all 
manner  of  horrible  things,  but  still  maintained  his  sobriety 
and  surly  dignity.  It  is  safe  to  say  that  this  set  of  "  cheap 
trippers"  were  not  to  be  easily  shocked.  Bad  language  and 
bad  conduct  were  not  approved  of  or  indulged  in  by  most 
of  them,  but  simply  overlooked  in  others  as  of  no  moment. 

But  so  abominable  was  the  behaviour  of  this  godly  new- 
comer, such  language  did  he  use  in  his  drunken  ecstasy, 
such  scenes  did  he  depict  aloud  as  having  attractions  for 
him,  that  there  was  not  a  man,  from  the  owner  of  the  vessel 
to  the  half-castes  and  natives  of  the  crew  who  understood 
English,  who  didn't  feel  that  he  would  only  get  his  deserts 
if  he  were  thrown  to  the  sharks.  And  that  was  not  the 
worst  of  it.  The  island  of  Mokengai  was  largely  cultivated 
for  cotton  by  a  number  of  Tokalau  or  Line  Island  people 
brought  from  the  flat  sandy  islands  or  islets  on  the  equator. 
They  are  a  splendid  race  of  men,  nearly  all  of  them  over 
six  feet  high  and  the  women  proportionately  tall.  Finer 
swimmers  cannot  be.  They  swim  out  and  kill  big  sharks 
with  a  knife,  and  perform  feats  of  strength  and  agility  alike 
on  land  and  in  water  that  are  quite  surprising.  Neither 
sex  wears  any  clothes  at  all  in  their  own  islands,  or,  at  first, 
elsewhere.  Their  hair  is  straight  and  long  and  black  and 
the  girls  have  the  most  magnificent  figures  imaginable, 
while  their  looks,  though  not  equal  to  the  Samoans,  are  far 
superior  to  the  negroid  type  of  the  Fijians. 

Some  of  us  anticipated  that  the  "holy  man  from  Sydney," 
as  we  called  him,  might  bring  trouble  upon  us  after  we 
landed,  but  nobody  foresaw  or  made  ready  for  what  actually 
befell;  the  rather  that  he  had  been  seriously  warned  to  be 
careful  what  he  was  about.  We  had  had  some  food  ashore 


132  THE  RECORD  OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

and  were  smoking  afterwards  before  strolling  over  the 
plantation,  all  of  us,  happily  as  it  turned  out,  keeping 
together,  when  we  heard  a  roar  of  native  voices  and  directly 
afterwards  the  bank  manager  came  rushing  towards  us, 
pale  as  death,  panting  out  in  terror,  "Save  me,  save  me." 
Behind  him  came  a  hundred  or  so  of  the  Line  Islanders 
with  their  knives  drawn  eager  to  cut  the  poor  wretch  to 
atoms.  There  was  nothing  for  it  but  to  push  the  fellow  to 
the  back  of  us,  and  stand  in  a  line  before  him.  It  was  in 
fact  a  desperate  situation,  and  had  any  one  drawn  a  re- 
volver to  protect  himself  I  firmly  believe  every  man  of  us 
would  have  perished.  As  it  happened,  there  was  with  us 
a  very  powerful  and  capable  Scotsman,  named  Campbell, 
who  had  a  plantation  on  Viti  Levu,  who  employed  there 
and  treated  well  a  number  of  these  Tokalau  folk,  under- 
stood and  spoke  their  language,  and  who  was  greatly  re- 
spected by  them  as  a  just  and  good  man,  well  versed  in 
their  customs.  He  coolly  stepped  right  in  front  of  all  of 
us  —  a  pluckier  thing  I  never  saw  done  in  all  my  life  — 
and  began  a  talk  with  the  man  who  seemed  to  be  the  leader 
of  the  infuriated  Tokalau  boys,  while  the  others  were  ges- 
ticulating and  vociferating  around,  making  it  very  clear 
what  they  would  do  to  the  fugitive,  and  even  to  us  if  we 
defended  him.  The  coolest  and  most  experienced  of  our 
party  admitted  afterwards  that  they  believed  their  last  day 
had  come. 

But  Campbell,  having  been  informed  as  to  what  had 
caused  all  this  hubbub,  and  why  the  men  were  so  exasperated 
against  the  newcomer,  promised  that  the  white  man  should 
be  severely  punished,  that  he  should  pay  a  heavy  fine,  and 
that  he  should  at  once  be  sent  off  to  the  schooner.  Grad- 
ually, by  his  demeanour  and  promises  he  calmed  them 
down,  and  needless  to  say  we  packed  off  the  black  sheep 
to  the  schooner  as  soon  as  possible,  and  gave  the  Tokalaus 
and  tobacco  as  a  temporary  solatium.  While 


POLYNESIA  133 

this  was  being  done  the  cause  of  all  the  trouble  was  praying 
alone  in  the  most  fervent  fashion  to  Providence  to  save 
him  from  the  heathen  who  so  furiously  raged  against  him. 
We  were  glad  to  get  rid  of  him.  The  following  morning  he 
actually  talked  quite  big  about  the  outrage  committed  upon 
him,  but  came  to  his  senses  when  he  was  told  he  would  be 
put  ashore  again. 

I  suggested  to  him  myself  that  a  full  account  of  the 
episode  by  me  in  the  Sydney  Morning  Herald  would  scarcely 
enhance  his  reputation  in  Australia.  As  the  lascivious  fool 
had  grossly  insulted  a  married  woman  in  his  half-drunken 
fury,  and  thus  brought  the  whole  tribe  upon  himself,  the 
latter  threat  also  had  its  effect.  I  did  not  see  the  man 
again  until  he  was  within  forty-eight  hours  of  his  depar- 
ture, when  I  learned  he  had  carried  on  in  the  same  unseemly 
fashion  for  another  fortnight,  but  was  now  "  straightening 
up."  He  actually  went  off  as  sober  as  when  he  arrived, 
and  I  took  a  look  at  the  brute  in  his  office  on  my  return  to 
Sydney  some  months  later.  A  most  respectable,  God- 
fearing citizen,  implicitly  trusted  by  his  bank  and  almost 
revered  by  his  friends  and  family.  This  is  what  he  then  was. 

I  am  not,  so  far  as  I  know,  a  superstitious  man,  nor  is 
the  circumstance  which  I  am  about  to  relate  necessarily 
outside  the  realm  of  natural  phenomena  in  these  days  of 
wireless  telegraphy,  telepathy,  and  the  like ;  but  I  have 
never  known  myself  of  a  similar  case,  certainly  nothing  of 
the  same  kind  has  ever  happened  to  me  before  or  since. 
I  was  staying  with  some  planters  —  Campbell,  Wolseley 
Markham,  and  Royds  —  at  Nandi  Bay,  on  the  leeward  side 
of  the  great  island  of  Viti  Levu,  when  it  occurred ;  far  away 
from  any  possible  means  of  communication,  and  about  as 
remote  from  civilisation  as  I  could  well  be. 

Among  my  numerous  relations  there  was  only  one  of 
whom  I  was  exceptionally  fond,  or  who  had  any  consider- 
able influence  over  me.  This  was  one  of  my  aunts,  my 


134  THE   RECORD  OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

mother's  sister,  Margarette  Mayers.  She  was  a  woman  of 
great  charm  and  very  wide  knowledge  alike  of  the  worlds 
of  science  and  letters,  a  delightful  character  in  every  way. 
My  mother  having  died  when  I  was  very  young  it  may  be 
that  I  concentrated  upon  her  that  affection  which  I  should 
have  felt  for  my  mother  herself  had  she  been  living.  At  any 
rate,  our  relations  were  of  that  close  and  intimate  char- 
acter, and  I  habitually  confided  to  her  all  my  hopes  and 
fears  and  troubles  and  ambitions.  I  believe  she  felt  for  me 
the  same  sort  of  loving  regard  in  her  way  that  I  undoubtedly 
felt  for  her  in  mine.  When  I  left  England  in  1869  she  was 
in  poor  health  and,  though  I  had  no  idea  myself  that  her 
end  was  near,  she  had  a  sort  of  premonition  that  we  should 
never  meet  again,  which  she  expressed  to  me  sadly  when 
I  went  to  see  her  and  bid  her  good-bye  at  her  house,  Beech 
Lodge,  surrounded  in  those  days  by  a  large  garden,  and 
facing  on  Wimbledon  Common.  "Well,"  said  I  half  jok- 
ingly, "if  you  do  feel  very  ill  and  want  me  back  quickly 
you  must  try  and  send  me  a  message  wherever  I  may  be." 
She  was  a  deeply  religious  woman  and  upon  my  saying 
this  she,  lying  there  on  a  sofa,  uttered  a  prayer  for  my  wel- 
fare in  all  the  changes  and  chances  of  this  mortal  life,  and 
then,  with  tears  in  her  eyes,  told  me  she  would  try  to  let 
me  know,  so  that  I  might  get  back  in  time  to  bid  her  fare- 
well, if  she  was  convinced  that  her  end  was  approaching. 

So  there  I  was,  sleeping  in  a  native  mbure  or  thatched 
cottage,  under  the  same  mosquito  curtains  with  Markham, 
on  the  Fiji  mats  spread  on  a  rough  couch  at  Nandi,  sur- 
rounded by  savage  tribes,  thinking  not  at  all  of  home  sur- 
roundings that  night,  or  of  home  and  home  influences  in 
any  way,  though  Margarette  and  one  other  woman  were 
frequently  in  my  mind  at  other  times.  In  the  morning 
when  we  got  up  and  were  making  ready  for  breakfast  it 
suddenly  flashed  upon  me  that  I  had  had  a  remarkable 
dream,  and  my  mind  went  off  instinctively  to  my  aunt  and 


POLYNESIA  135 

her  ill  health.  I  turned  to  Markham  and  said,  "I  have 
had  a  most  vivid  and  extraordinary  dream.  I  dreamed  a 
telegraph  boy  ran  up  to  me  in  great  haste  and  pushed  a 
telegraphic  message  in  its  envelope  into  my  hands  with  the 
words,  'Very  urgent,  sir/  I  tore  it  open  and  found  only 
the  words,  'Come  home,  come  home,  come  home/  written 
three  times.  '  Where  did  this  come  from  ? '  I  asked  the  boy. 
1 1  don't  know,  sir/  he  replied;  'all  I  know  is  it  came  over 
three  continents."'  Had  I  then  immediately  started  for 
Levuka  and  taken  the  first  steamer  back  to  England  I 
should  have  arrived  in  time  to  see  my  aunt  before  her 
death.  I  have  ever  since  deeply  regretted  I  did  not  obey 
what  I  now  believe  was  a  definite  summons  from  her  to 
return. 

If  I  were  to  enlarge  upon  my  Polynesian  experiences  and 
sketch  even  lightly  all  the  remarkable  characters,  white 
men  and  natives,  I  met,  these  memories  would  attain  to 
the  proportions  of  a  little  library.  Some  of  them  were  of 
such  a  character  that  perhaps  it  is  well  I  saw  them  no 
more.  But  my  stay  in  the  Islands  was  most  enjoyable  to 
me  and  I  have  always  longed  to  go  back ;  though  I  am  told 
I  should  be  greatly  disappointed  now,  not  with  the  beauty 
of  the  land  and  the  delights  of  the  sea,  which  are  unchang- 
ing, but  with  the  mist  of  smug  respectability  that  has 
settled  down  upon  the  groups.  Certainly  my  liking 
for  the  natives  grew  the  longer  I  stayed  among  them,  and  I 
resented  the  contemptuous  manner  in  which  they  were 
treated  by  the  invading  whites.  So  strongly  did  I  feel 
about  this  that  I  wrote  at  the  time  a  somewhat  rhetorical 
defence  of  the  Fijians  which  I  put  in  the  mouth  of  an  edu- 
cated man  of  the  race.  How  it  has  survived  the  more 
than  forty  years  of  interval  between  then  and  now  I  do  not 
know,  but  I  give  it  here  as  a  fair  summary  of  my  impres- 
sions at  the  time : 

"You  call  us  naked  savages,  and  say  we  are  incapable  of 


136  THE  RECORD   OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

being  raised  much  above  the  level  of  the  beasts.  It  may 
be  so.  But  to  what  do  you  white  men  owe  your  boasted 
civilisation  ?  Is  it  not  to  the  continuous  work  of  those  who 
have  preceded  you  ?  Have  you  not  built  upon  the  founda- 
tions laid  by  the  Babylonians,  by  the  Chinese,  by  the  Egyp- 
tians, by  the  Greeks  and  by  many  who  flourished  long 
before  them?  To  estimate  a  people  aright  it  is  necessary 
to  appreciate  the  conditions  under  which  it  has  grown  up. 
Nations  like  individuals  can  but  make  the  best  of  the  oppor- 
tunities which  are  thrown  in  their  way.  We,  as  others, 
were  moulded  before  we  were  born.  In  many  points  of  real 
civilisation  we  are  as  far  advanced  as  any  race  could  be, 
separated  as  we  have  been  from  the  main  stream  of  hu- 
manity which,  running  in  a  slender  rivulet  from  some  for- 
gotten spring,  has  had  unaided  to  fret  a  channel  for  itself 
through  the  hard  rock  of  knowledge. 

"  Destitute  of  iron  and  without  other  minerals  can  you 
upbraid  us  with  lack  of  ingenuity  because  we  fashioned 
saws  out  of  sharks'  teeth  and  axes  out  of  stones?  Poor 
tools,  true ;  yet  can  your  most  skilful  boat-builders  produce 
more  perfect  specimens  of  their  art  than  our  double  canoes  ? 
Look  at  our  tappa :  —  Is  that  delicate  fabric  made  out  of 
rough  bark,  are  those  coloured  designs  and  geometrical 
patterns  wrought  in  with  nothing  but  rude  stencil-plates, 
the  work  of  mere  barbarians  ?  Our  language :  —  Does  your 
own  tongue,  of  which  you  are  so  proud,  excel  it  in  idiomatic 
vigour,  or  in  the  power  of  expression  of  refined  shades  of 
meaning  ?  Our  daily  life :  —  Are  we  not  respectful  and 
polite  to  one  another  and  to  you?  Have  you  met  with 
greater  or  more  considerate  hospitality  in  any  part  of  the 
world  ?  Our  agriculture :  —  Are  the  irrigated  plains  of  Lom- 
bardy,  the  sand-recovered  districts  of  the  Waes,  the  high- 
farmed  slopes  of  the  Lothians  better  cultivated  than  our 
yam-beds  and  taro  patches?  Place  a  European  pair,  se- 
questered from  all  their  fellows,  on  a  tropic  isle,  where 


POLYNESIA  137 

every  air  breathes  listlessness  and  the  'winds  come  to  them 
from  the  fields  of  sleep/  deprive  them  of  white  men's  tools 
and  leave  but  the  remembrance  of  past  knowledge  to  guide 
them  on  their  path.  Is  it  altogether  impossible  that  their 
children  might  descend  even  below  our  level? 

"But  we  are  naked  —  naked  savages.  Naked  to  a  cer- 
tain extent,  yes:  savages,  no.  And  what,  after  all,  is 
nakedness  ?  In  your  cold,  inhospitable  clime  the  naked  die. 
We  live  —  and  live  well.  We  thrive  where  you  dwindle  — 
under  the  sun.  To  us,  as  your  crude  economy  would  say, 
clothes  are  a  luxury;  to  you,  a  necessity.  In  your  myth 
of  the  creation  the  primeval  pair  in  their  purity  went  naked ; 
fallen,  they  were  clad.  Are  our  men  sots,  our  women  har- 
lots ?  No ;  but  drunkenness  and  prostitution  were  unknown 
before  the  white  men  came.  Gin  and  syphilis !  Great 
Heavens,  what  boons  the  pale-faces  have  granted  us ! 
Religion  has  tamed  and  bettered  us.  Has  it  ?  What  is  it  ? 
The  Wesleyan  or  the  Catholic :  which  is  the  blind  guide  ? 
Your  humble  Wesleyan  who  exacts  from  us  a  deference 
more  servile  than  that  paid  to  the  haughtiest  of  our  chiefs  ? 
Your  high-souled  Catholic  who  trys  to  dazzle  us  with  painted 
mummeries?  And  you  money-getting  whites  yourselves, 
what  religion  do  you  follow?  Is  it  the  golden  calf  or  the 
grog-bottle  that  you  worship  ?" 

" Cannibalism?  There,  indeed,  is  a  blot  never  to  be 
wiped  out.  Something,  perhaps,  may  be  said  for  us  even 
here.  I  have  read  that  white  men,  alone  with  their  own 
kind,  have  been  driven  by  want  of  food  to  batten  upon 
those  of  their  own  species.  Live  upon  starch  alone  for  a 
time,  eat  yams  or  taro  only  for  a  few  weeks  or  months  and 
see  if  Dante's  terrific  line  Piu  che  il  dolor  pote  il  dijiuno 
does  not  acquire  a  hideous  significance  for  you.  You  will 
then  feel  that  intense,  that  feverish  lust  after  flesh  which 

We  had  neither  pigs  nor  fowls,  sheep  nor  cattle.  We 

could  not  beget  them.  We  could  not.  We  caught  men 


138  THE  RECORD  OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

and  we  ate  them.  Killed  them  that  we  the  survivors  might 
live.  Horrible,  is  it  not?  Yet  is  it  worse  to  slay  men  to 
appease  hunger  than  to  burn  them  in  the  cause  of  religion, 
or  butcher  them  in  the  name  of  liberty?  We  killed  all 
shipwrecked  people.  Not  so ;  there  are  white  men  now  in 
our  island  who  have  lived  amongst  us  unharmed  for  fifty 
years.  And  what  if  we  did  kill  some ;  not  a  hundred  years 
are  past  since  the  murdering  wreckers  of  Cornwall  could 
have  echoed  back  a  noble  chorus  to  our  man-eating  song. 

"Enough.  You  wish  for  an  excuse  to  exterminate  us. 
It  is  easier  to  exterminate  than  to  civilise.  That  you  know 
well.  You  are  the  more  powerful:  excuses  are  easily 
found.  Say  not,  however,  that  we  are  mere  savages.  We 
have  much  to  learn;  we  have  learnt  and  are  learning  fast. 
But  you,  too,  may  learn  one  thing  at  least  from  us  —  not 
to  despise  that  which  you  have  taken  no  pains  to  under- 
stand." 

And  about  all  this  there  is  no  exaggeration.  It  is  im- 
possible not  to  feel  respect  for  a  people  who  can  attain  to 
such  a  level  of  culture  under  such  conditions.  Their  great 
ndruas  or  double  canoes,  held  together  only  by  cocoa-nut 
twine,  yet  making  no  water,  and  their  decks  so  splendidly 
carpentered  with  a  flint  adze  that  a  fine  European  plane 
could  not  touch  them;  their  admirable  and  elaborate 
irrigation  and  cultivation  of  their  lands,  and  the  just  ap- 
portionment of  the  product  —  all  achieved  without  ex- 
change and  with  no  circulating  medium  —  I  look  back  to, 
even  now,  as  foreshadowing  what  humanity  will  attain  to 
on  an  infinitely  higher  level  when,  the  gold  fetish  finally 
overthrown,  and  the  exploitation  of  the  many  by  the  few 
put  an  end  to,  mankind  will  resume  control  over  those 
vastly  greater  means  of  producing  wealth  by  which  we  of 
to-day  are  over-mastered  and  crushed  down.  Meanwhile 
the  slum-dwellers  of  our  cities  are  almost  infinitely  worse 
off  than  the  meanest  kaisis  of  a  Fiji  tribe. 


CHAPTER  IX 

JOURNALISM 

BACK  from  Levuka  to  New  Zealand,  on  to  Sydney  and 
Melbourne  again,  where  I  saw  and  bade  farewell  to  my 
friends,  then  back  to  Auckland,  and  from  Auckland  to 
Honolulu  by  the  Wonga  Wonga;  from  there  to  San  Fran- 
cisco by  the  Moses  Taylor;  the  "rolling  Moses/7  one  of  the 
oldest  and  most  ricketty  of  the  old  beam  steamers  which 
then  crossed  the  Pacific.  The  Central  and  Union  Pacific 
Railways  had  not  then  long  been  completed,  the  former  by 
Chinese  labour,  and  it  is  strange  to  recall  nowadays  that  I 
saw  myself  great  herds  of  buffalo  as  we  crossed  the  plains, 
and  that  Brigham  Young  was  still  lord  of  all  he  surveyed 
when  I  took  a  run  down  to  Salt  Lake  City. 

My  companions  from  Auckland  were,  with  two  exceptions, 
very  pleasant  agreeable  people.  San  Francisco,  a  charming 
city,  had  just  recovered  from  a  serious  earthquake,  and 
there  were  great  gaps  in  the  pavements.  My  fellow-travel- 
ler across  America  was  Captain  Lees,  head  of  the  San  Fran- 
cisco detective  police.  I  have  often  wondered  since  whether 
his  friendly  attentions  on  the  way  over  and  in  New  York 
were  wholly  disinterested.  Certainly,  when  I  came  to 
think  the  matter  over  I  was  scarcely  ever  out  of  his  sight, 
and  it  is  within  the  bounds  of  possibility  that  I  had  been 
pointed  out  to  this  famous  officer  as  a  dangerous  criminal 
by  a  fellow-passenger  named  Neilson  to  whom  I  had  taken 
a  great  dislike.  However  that  may  be,  Captain  Lees's 
presence  gave  me  the  opportunity  of  seeing  the  seamy  side 
of  New  York  as  few  honest  men,  I  think,  have  ever  seen  it. 

139 


140  THE   RECORD  OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

Since  then  I  have  never  been  in  the  least  surprised  at  tales 
of  murder  or  disappearance  in  that  city. 

Some  of  the  most  dangerous  dens  I  went  into  with  him 
were  located  in  fairly  well-situated  respectable-looking 
houses;  while  on  the  first-floor  of  one  of  the  finest  build- 
ings then  in  Broadway  I  made  the  acquaintance  of  what 
Lees  told  me  was  the  strongest  firm  of  "fences"  in  the  east 
of  the  United  States.  It  was  scarcely  complimentary  to 
me,  I  thought,  that  Lees  and  the  members  of  the  firm 
talked  quite  familiarly  in  my  presence  of  the  whereabouts 
of  this  or  that  notorious  burglar  or  manslayer,  either  "  doing 
time"  or  qualifying  for  that  monotonous  occupation;  but 
the  extraordinary  "lay  outs"  they  showed  me  to  facilitate 
cheating  at  faro  and  other  gambling  games,  interested  me 
so  much  that  I  forgot  all  about  the  strange  company  I  was 
in.  The  marvellous  mechanical  ingenuity  displayed  in 
devising  and  constructing  these  implements  for  getting  the 
better  of  the  unsuspecting  punter  amazed  me,  and  enabled 
me  afterwards  to  understand  certain  remarkable  runs  in 
favour  of  the  bank  I  witnessed  out  West.  I  likewise  feasted 
my  eyes  upon  some  of  the  very  finest  jewellery  it  has  ever 
been  my  lot  to  see.  Magnificent  stones,  splendidly  set, 
which  I  presume  had  been  "conveyed"  with  sufficient  dex- 
terity to  their  temporary  owners  to  relieve  them  from  the 
necessity  for  great  caution  in  showing  them.  At  any  rate, 
Captain  Lees  took  it  all  as  a  matter  of  course,  and  I  did  my 
best  to  maintain  similar  coolness  of  demeanour;  though  I 
will  admit  I  felt  more  comfortable  when  I  was  again  tramp- 
ing the  sidewalk  amid  less  adventurous  folk. 

But  if  anybody  invites  you  to  investigate  the  hells  with 
two  entrances,  which  I  believe  are  still  to  be  found  in  the 
Empire  City,  even  when  accompanied  by  a  capable  officer 
armed  to  the  teeth  —  and  Captain  Lees  was  armed  to  the 
teeth  and  was  regarded  as  a  dare-devil  even  on  the  Pacific 
Slope  —  let  me  recommend  you  not  to  go.  It  may  not 


JOURNALISM  141 

have  been  such  a  narrow  squeak  for  us  both  as  I  thought 
it  was  at  the  time;  but  when  in  New  York  I  have  never 
passed  University  Place,  from  that  day  to  this,  without 
feeling  that  I  might  have  omitted  to  notice  a  hole  through 
me,  and  Lees  himself  admitted  that  such  a  visit  as  ours 
that  night  "  held  some  risk."  And  yet  nobody  would  have 
thought  of  danger  at  first.  Why  my  first  visit  to  New 
York  should  have  taken  me  into  such  very  queer  regions 
and  such  still  queerer  company,  male  and  female,  is  a  ques- 
tion which  Lees  might  perhapsrhave  answered  correctly.  I 
certainly  cannot. 

But  all  through  my  life,  without  having  any  predilection 
for  getting  into  peril,  or  boasting  of  any  high  personal 
courage,  I  have  drifted  into  very  ugly  scrapes  and  dilemmas 
indeed,  from  which  I  have  emerged  unscathed,  far  more  by 
good  luck  than  good  management.  So  I  was  a  little  sur- 
prised when,  a  few  years  later,  a  well-known  Oxford  man, 
whose  close  acquaintance  I  first  made  on  Levuka  beach, 
asked  me,  we  being  both  members  of  the  New  University 
Club,  to  go  with  him  in  a  yacht  he  was  having  built  in  New 
Zealand  on  a  trip  to  the  New  Hebrides,  the  Solomon  Islands, 
and  the  then  almost  unknown  groups  of  the  Sooloo  Sea.  I 
had,  however,  then  plunged  in  earnest  into  journalism  and 
politics  and  was  deep  in  my  studies  of  India.  I  therefore 
declined.  He  was,  nevertheless,  kind  enough  to  press  me 
again  more  than  once  to  accompany  him,  pointing  out  the 
charm  of  the  adventure.  Annoyed  at  being  unable  to 
accept  I  said  at  last,  "  There  are  at  least  a  score  of  men 
around  us  here  in  the  Club  whom  you  know  even  better 
than  you  know  me,  who  have  nothing  to  do  and  would 
jump  at  the  chance  of  going  with  you."  "Yes,"  he  replied, 
"I  know  them  very  well  indeed  here  in  Pall  Mall  and  Picca- 
dilly, but  I  don't  know  them  out  in  the  South  Seas."  And 
there  is,  I  suppose,  a  difference. 

I  crossed  from  New  York  in  the  Guion  liner  Manhattan, 


142     THE  RECORD  OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

of  about  1800  tons.  That  sounds  to-day  as  if  I  had  re- 
marked casually  that  I  visited  Rhode  Island  in  an  Ice- 
lander's boat.  The  change  from  the  Manhattan  to  the 
Mauretania  is  almost  as  great  as  the  contrast  between  a 
Viking  craft  and  the  Manhattan.  And  so  I  found  myself  in 
London,  after  just  two  years  absence,  on  February  13,  1871. 

The  great  Franco-German  War,  which  so  completely 
transformed  the  European  situation,  had  taken  place  in 
the  meantime,  and  now,  with  the  German  army  still  can- 
toned around  Paris,  we  were  on  the  eve  of  the  Commune. 
Those  were  stirring  times.  That  Great  Britain  ought  to 
have  taken  the  lead  in  calling  a  halt  after  the  collapse  of 
the  Empire  at  Sedan  would,  I  take  it,  be  disputed  by  few 
at  the  present  time.  But  the  sympathies  of  our  German 
Court  with  the  German  conquerors  and  the  incredible  coward- 
ice of  the  pusillanimous  Ministry  then  in  power,  rendered 
scarcely  necessary  the  braggadocio  threats  which  Prince 
Bismarck  tumbled  out  upon  Lord  Granville.  It  was  de- 
creed that  we  should  play  our  silly  part  in  constituting  the 
piratical  Hohenzollerns  the  future  dictators  of  Europe,  and 
the  full  effects  of  this  imbecile  policy  are  only  being  fully 
felt  now,  forty  years  afterwards,  though  foreseen  and  pre- 
dicted by  many  of  us  at  the  time. 

But  the  short  and  frightful  tragedy  of  the  Commune  of 
Paris  swept  away  for  a  few  months  the  memories  of  the 
recent  war,  and  even  the  records  of  the  siege  of  the  French 
Metropolis,  with  all  the  terrible  suffering  from  famine  and 
privation  which  accompanied  that  memorable  investment 
and  occupation.  To  myself  as  an  Englishman  who  had 
known  Paris  since  1858,  who  had  watched  the  marvellous 
transformation  of  that  great  city  by  Napoleon  III.  and 
Baron  Haussmann,  who  had  sympathised  with  the  protests 
of  the  noble  Frenchmen  led  by  Victor  Hugo  against  the  Im- 
perial regime,  and  had  read  with  delight  Les  Propos  de 
Labienus,  the  trenchant  sarcasms  of  Rochefort  and  the 


JOURNALISM  143 

delightful  irony  of  that  master  of  veiled  satire,  the  unfor- 
tunate Prevost-Paradol,  there  was  to  me  something  of 
almost  personal  sorrow  at  the  disasters  which  befell  the 
combined  Athens  and  Corinth  of  modern  Europe. 

Few  cities  in  history  have  a  personality  of  their  own. 
Babylon,  Jerusalem,  Athens,  Alexandria,  Carthage,  Rome 
and  Florence  exhaust  the  list  in  the  past,  and  Paris  alone 
takes  up  the  tale  for  our  times.  That  indescribable  quality 
which  we  speak  of  as  " charm"  ever  surrounds  and  beautifies 
her.  She  is  the  capital  of  the  world  of  art  and  intellect  as 
well  as  of  fashion  and  pleasure.  The  joy  of  life  to  those  who 
really  live  can  be  felt  nowhere  on  earth  so  keenly  as  there. 
Nowhere  are  men  of  ability  and  genius  so  easily  accessible, 
nowhere  is  the  influence  of  brilliant  women  so  readily  ad- 
mitted, or  so  highly  esteemed.  Even  in  these  days  of  the 
omnipotence  of  mere  wealth  Paris  still  possesses  men  of 
genius  who  gratuitously  give  their  services  to  students  in 
art  and  science,  and  it  is  not  essential  that  such  people 
should  be  rich  in  order  that  they  should  be  deeply  respected. 
The  very  defects  of  this  great  city  make  her  a  portion  of 
the  daily  world-interest  of  mankind.  But  that  which  en- 
titles her  to  the  highest  regard  is  that,  notwithstanding  their 
apparent  lightness  of  manners  and  indifference  to  outside 
opinion,  the  inhabitants  of  Paris  have  ever  been  in  the 
front  rank  when  efforts  have  been  made  for  the  uplifting  of 
the  human  race  and  the  development  of  the  human  intel- 
ligence. 

And  that  is  why  the  rising  of  the  people,  on  behalf  of 
their  Commune  and  the  freedom  of  their  city,  after  the 
great  siege,  stirred  up  such  a  wave  of  sympathy  on  the 
part  of  all  democrats  and  such  deep  hatred  on  the  part  of 
all  reactionists  throughout  the  civilised  world.  The  revolt 
itself  was  hopeless  from  the  first.  Even  if  better  organisa- 
tion and  a  bolder  strategy  had  routed  the  Versailles  troops, 
as  might  perhaps  have  been  done,  the  German  army  still 


144  THE  RECORD   OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

held  its  ground,  and  time  would  have  enabled  the  forces  of 
reaction  to  rally  again  to  the  assault.  Nor  is  it  too  much 
to  say  that  the  failure  and  the  butchery  which  followed 
threw  back  the  movement  of  the  proletariat  of  Paris  fully 
twenty  years.  Leaders  of  the  type  of  Delescluze  and  others 
who  fell  in  the  strife,  or  were  slaughtered  by  Gallifet  and 
his  kindred  ruffians  in  cold  blood,  are  not  very  plentiful 
even  in  France.  But  when  every  account  is  taken  of  the 
blunders  and  mismanagement  of  the  Commune  the  fact  re- 
mains that  this  assertion  by  the  workers  of  Paris  of  their 
right  to  control  the  administration  of  their  own  city,  and 
their  declaration  of  the  solidarity  of  the  workers  of  the 
world,  marks  a  stage  in  the  history  of  the  advance  of  the 
"Fourth  Estate7'  in  its  struggle  for  emancipation;  and  the 
martyrs  of  the  Commune  have  since  been  revered  as  martyrs 
in  the  cause  of  human  freedom  by  Socialists  all  over  the 
world.  This,  of  course,  was  by  no  means  the  view  taken 
of  them  at  the  time  by  the  governing  classes  of  Europe.  In 
England  the  feeling  against  Communards  was  particularly 
bitter.  Our  leaders  of  opinion  made  out  even  the  pulling 
down  of  the  Vendome  Column  glorifying  Napoleon's  vic- 
tories by  the  great  artist  Courbet,  to  be  a  crime  against 
civilisation.  Our  own  capitalist  press  of  that  date  in  par- 
ticular covered  itself  with  infamy,  rejoicing  in  the  whole- 
sale massacre  of  men,  women,  and  children  without  trial 
against  the  wall  at  Pere  La  Chaise  and  on  the  plain  of 
Satory. 

Though  not  then  a  Socialist  my  sympathies  were  on  the 
side  of  the  men  and  women  of  Paris,  w~ho  were  hopelessly 
fighting  for  what  they  believed  to  be  right.  Yachting  with 
my  old  friend  Henry  Spicer  in  his  cutter  the  Dione  we  went 
together  at  Ryde  to  dine  with  a  Mr.  Bishop,  the  owner  of 
a  very  fine  schooner  of  that  day.  This  was  when  the  Com- 
mune was  in  full  swing  and  I  presume  I  championed  the 
cause  of  the  Parisian  people  rather  vigorously,  because  I 


JOURNALISM  145 

heard  afterwards  that  Mr.  Bishop  complained  that  "Spicer 
actually  brought  a  red-hot  Communist  to  dine  with  me." 
The  Positivists,  however,  could  scarcely  be  accused  of  com- 
ing within  the  category  of  "  red-hot  Communists."  Far 
from  it.  As  I  have  often  said  of  them,  "  their  theories  are 
all  wrong  but  their  actions  are  all  right."  This  was  no 
exception  to  the  rule.  As  in  the  case  of  their  admirable 
defence  of  Trade  Unionism  and  Trade  Unionists  against  the 
furious  attacks  of  the  majority  of  Englishmen  of  their  own 
class  in  1866,  when  the  Broadhead  outrage  at  Sheffield  had 
set  public  opinion  in  bitter  antagonism  to  working  class 
combinations  of  every  kind ;  so  in  this  instance  of  the  Com- 
munards of  Paris  the  whole  of  the  followers  of  Comte  took 
the  unpopular  side  —  causa  victrix  Dis  placuit  sed  victa 
Catoni  —  and  Mr.  Frederic  Harrison  voiced  the  opinions  of 
Messrs.  Beesly,  Bridges,  Coventry,  Crompton  and  other 
Positivists,  who  made  themselves  heard  elsewhere,  in  his 
memorable  article  in  The  Fortnightly  Review,  then  edited  by 
the  present  Viscount  Morley  of  Blackburn. 

This  pronouncement  by  Mr.  Frederic  Harrison  ran  di- 
rectly counter  to  the  prevailing  views  of  the  well-to-do  in 
this  country.  Not  only  so,  but  the  Positivist  leaders  busied 
themselves  in  procuring  employment  for  the  Communist 
refugees.  Later,  I  knew  some  of  these  Communists  more 
or  less  intimately  and  it  seems  strange  nowadays  that  such 
men  as  Clemenceau,  Longuet,  Camelinat,  Jourde,  Beslay, 
Rochefort,  Felix  Pyat  and  Cluseret,  to  speak  only  of  the 
educated  leaders,  should  have  been  put  down  as  blood- 
thirsty desperadoes  eager  to  massacre  their  fellow-citizens 
and  to  destroy  the  great  monuments  of  their  metropolis. 
But  towards  the  end  of  the  two  months  of  resistance  by  the 
Communards  to  the  invasion  of  M.  Thiers  and  his  army  of 
reaction  a  positive  blood-lust  had  seized  upon  the  possess- 
ing classes  here  and  elsewhere.  Nothing  was  too  bad  for 
the  supporters  of  the  Commune.  And  had  the  hideous 


146  THE  RECORD  OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

" torture  of  the  boat,"  so  graphically  described  by  Plutarch, 
been  suggested  as  a  punishment  for  the  principal  Com- 
munists it  is  my  firm  belief  the  proposal  would  have  been 
greeted  with  acclamation  by  some  of  the  leading  lights  of 
English  Society.  Certain  it  is  that  the  most  atrocious 
slaughterings  in  cold  blood  and  without  trial  ever  known  in 
Western  Europe  were  regarded  as  quite  a  legitimate  and 
even  laudable  vengeance  for  the  attempt  of  the  workers  of 
Paris  to  control  the  destinies  of  their  own  city. 

It  so  happened,  however,  that  my  old  friend  E.  B.  Michell, 
the  famous  amateur  sculler  and  athlete  and  my  brother 
Hugh,  both  of  them  members  of  Magdalen  College,  Oxford, 
and  thorough-going  Conservatives,  were  in  Paris  during 
the  Commune  period,  having  succeeded,  in  company  with 
Frederick  Myers  of  Trinity,  Cambridge,  the  author  of  St. 
Paul,  etc.,  in  getting  into  the  city,  just  after  the  armistice 
and  temporary  German  occupation.  Michell  also,  I  may 
say,  was  at  the  time  a  French  avocat  as  well  as  an  English 
barrister  and  thoroughly  understood  what  was  being  said 
and  done  around  him.  They  both  came  and  dined  with  me 
the  very  day  they  got  back  from  Paris,  and  hungry  enough 
I  remember  they  both  were,  in  spite  of  previous  efforts  to 
make  up  for  lost  meals.  Their  personal  experiences  were 
alike  interesting  and  exciting;  but  though  they  had  not 
been  very  well  treated  by  the  Communist  authorities  they 
agreed  that  never  in  their  time,  and  they  both  knew  Paris 
well,  had  that  city  been  so  admirably  managed  in  every 
way  as  under  the  rule  of  the  Commune.  All  the  most 
objectionable  features  of  Paris  life  had  been  greatly  miti- 
gated or  entirely  suppressed,  the  streets  were  kept  in  perfect 
order,  the  police  regulations  were  excellent  without  being 
oppressive,  and  the  various  public  departments  were  well 
managed. 

Michell  published  his  view  of  the  matter  at  the  time  in 
an  article  in  Eraser's  Magazine,  then  a  monthly  periodical 


JOURNALISM  147 

of  high  standing,  and  it  remains  a  cool,  unprejudiced  state- 
ment of  a  highly-educated  English  barrister,  quite  devoid 
of  revolutionary  ideas,  of  what  he  actually  saw  under  his 
eyes.  Some  of  the  important  reforms  introduced  by  the 
Communards  were  of  such  manifest  public  utility  that  they 
have  been  maintained  to  this  day.  And  the  administrators 
themselves,  with  all  the  resources  of  Paris  at  their  com- 
mand, lived  on  a  few  francs  a  day.  In  fact,  they  did  not 
recognise  that  they  were  committed  to  a  revolutionary 
policy  at  all,  and  endeavoured  to  keep  within  the  lines  of 
commonplace  bourgeois  ethic  even  in  the  midst .  of  revolu- 
tion. Thus  with  £60,000,000  of  gold  in  the  Bank  of  France, 
which  nobody  could  have  prevented  them  from  using,  a 
sufficient  sum  to  have  ensured  them  at  any  rate  temporary 
success,  the  heads  of  the  Commune  actually  went  and  bor- 
rowed £40,000  from  the  Rothschilds  for  public  purposes ! 
Revolutions  are  not  made  with  rosewater  in  that  way. 
Scrupulousness  in  leaders  is  at  such  times  criminal. 

The  Commune  failed  as  it  was  bound  to  fail.  The  Hotel 
de  Ville,  the  Tuileries  and  other  public  buildings  were 
burnt  down,  whole  streets  were  wrecked  in  the  fighting, 
and  Paris  was  given  over  to  the  reactionary  troops  for  days 
upon  days.  So  general  was  the  opinion  that  the  metropolis 
of  France  had  sustained  an  irremediable  shock  that  I  re- 
member being  one  night  at  a  music  hall  in  London  and 
overhearing  two  Parisians  discussing  the  situation.  They 
both  agreed  that  the  condition  of  their  city  was  most  de- 
plorable, and  that  the  destruction  wrought  by  desperate 
people  within  and  infuriated  reactionaries  from  without 
would  take  years  to  repair.  One  of  the  two  was  much  more 
pessimist  than  the  other.  He  was  the  owner  of  a  fine  flat 
in  the  Champs  Elyse*es  worth  at  least  £1000  a  year.  "I 
would  gladly  let  it  for  a  term  of  years  for  5000  francs  a 
year."  "Would  you  really?"  said  his  friend.  "Certainly, 
but  I  don't  know  any  one  who  would  be  foolish  enough  to 


148     THE  RECORD  OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

take  it."  "I  am  the  foolish  person  you  want.  I  will  agree 
to  take  it  now  and  run  my  chance."  They  actually  went 
off  together  to  the  lounge,  whither  I  followed  them,  drew 
up  an  agreement  and  signed  it  there  and  then. 

As  all  the  world  knows,  within  three  years,  France  and 
Paris  had  so  completely  recovered  from  the  German  con- 
quest, that  Prince  Bismarck  would  have  attacked  her  again 
but  for  the  menacing  attitude  of  Russia.  A  few  years  later 
still  and  the  despised  refugees  of  the  Commune  were  among 
the  leaders  of  the  Republic.  A  few  years  more  and  the 
ideas  for  which  the  men  and  women  of  the  Commune  fought 
and  fell  were  being  championed  by  an  organised  party  in  the 
French  Assembly.  No  wonder  the  personality  of  Paris 
attracts  the  admiration  and  love  of  all  advanced  men  and 
women  throughout  the  civilised  world.  May  her  future  be 
as  glorious  as  her  past ! 

From  1871  onwards  I  was  again  active  in  political  journal- 
ism, with  perhaps  a  little  more  of  personal  adventure  than 
is  usually  associated  with  that  sort  of  work.  This  was  due 
to  the  fact  that  most  of  my  writing  was  done  for  my  old 
friend  Frederick  Greenwood,  the  best  and  most  generous  of 
editors,  and  that,  happily  for  me,  I  was  not  at  all  dependent 
on  my  pen  for  my  livelihood.  It  is  strange  in  these  days  of 
trustified  journalism  to  look  back  to  the  time  when  editors 
controlled  the  newspapers  they  edited,  and  Delane  of  the 
Times  and  Walker  of  the  Daily  News  and  Greenwood  of 
the  Pall  Mall  Gazette  exerted  a  direct  and  recognised  per- 
sonal influence.  The  latter  collected  around  him  on  the 
staff  of  the  Pall  Mall  Gazette  a  remarkable  set  of  men,  who 
wrote,  in  the  main,  because  they  had,  or  believed  they  had, 
something  to  say  which  they  were  anxious  the  public  should 
hear.  Sir  James  Stephen,  Sir  Henry  Maine,  Leslie  Stephen, 
George  Henry  Lewes,  Maurice  and  Francis  Drummond, 
H.  D.  Traill,  D.  Lathbury,  with  Huxley,  John  Morley  and 
Coventry  Patmore  contributing  scientific  and  literary  articles 


JOURNALISM  149 

and  reviews,  were  all  writing  for  the  paper  at  the  same 
time.  Goldwin  Smith  called  it  "an  atheistical  Tory  organ7' ; 
but  in  truth  it  was  much  more  a  literary  sceptical  organ 
than  either,  and  allowed,  also,  as  free  expression  to  out- 
and-out  democratic  opinions,  if  ably  expressed,  as  any 
journal  in  the  country. 

Greenwood  himself  was  quite  an  admirable  editor  and 
until  he  permitted  his  strong  feeling  against  Mr.  Gladstone 
to  warp  his  judgment,  a  mistake  from  which  I  should  have 
thought  his  admirable  sense  of  humour  would  have  saved 
him,  he  was  thoroughly  impartial  in  his  views.  But  when 
once  he  became  an  active  political  journalist,  Greenwood 
took  the  imperial  duties  of  England  very  seriously  indeed, 
and  there  was  something  in  what  Karl  Marx  called  "the 
oleaginous  hypocrisy"  of  the  great  Liberal  leader  which 
upset  my  old  friend 's  equanimity  altogether,  and  caused 
him  to  attribute  to  Mr.  Gladstone  all  sorts  of  unscrupulous 
devices,  which  were,  in  truth,  no  more  than  evidence  of 
what  Thomas  Carlyle  called  "Mr.  Gladstone's  extraordinary 
faculty  of  convincing  himself  that  he  conscientiously  be- 
lieves whatsoever  tends  to  his  political  advantage"  —  a 
most  convenient  quality  of  mind  for  a  party  orator,  but  one 
exasperating  to  the  last  degree  to  a  writer  like  Greenwood. 
But  keen,  incisive,  humorous  and  original  as  Greenwood 
was  as  a  publicist,  and  quite  exceptionally  sympathetic  as 
his  touch  was  as  an  editor  —  I  never  knew  a  contributor 
complain  of  Greenwood's  editing  —  he  attached  far  more 
importance  to  his  suggestion  of  the  purchase  of  the  Suez 
Canal  Shares  than  to  the  high  position  he  achieved  as  a 
journalist  and  man  of  letters,  who  not  only  was  independent 
himself  but  was  the  cause  of  independence  in  others.  In 
this,  in  my  opinion,  he  was  wrong.  No  doubt  it  was  an 
extraordinary  thing  for  a  private  individual  to  bring  about 
a  State  transaction  which  resulted  in  a  market  enhancement 
in  the  value  of  the  shares,  bought  at  his  instance,  of  close 


150     THE  RECORD  OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

upon  £20,000,000  in  his  own  lifetime.  But  the  other  work 
he  did  was  in  a  higher  sphere,  and  it  is  strange  he  did  not 
recognise  this. 

I  saw  the  whole  of  that  Suez  Canal  business  very  close 
indeed,  and  I  remember  it  all  as  if  it  were  yesterday.  The 
Khedive  Ismail  was  very  anxious  to  sell  these  shares,  and 
was  pressing  them  for  sale  in  Paris.  Greenwood  heard  of 
this,  and  the  idea  occurred  to  him  that  the  best  possible 
buyer  would  be  the  British  Government.  I  happened  to 
be  at  the  Pall  Mall  Gazette  office  when  he  had  made  up  his 
mind  to  deal  seriously  with  the  matter.  He  asked  me  in  an 
offhand  way  what  I  thought  of  it.  I  said  it  seemed  to  me 
a  splendid  notion.  Greenwood  then  called  in  Traill  from 
another  room.  On  being  told  what  the  suggestion  was,  he, 
too,  was  quite  as  confident  of  the  merit  of  the  scheme  as  I 
was.  Then  and  there  Greenwood  went  off  in  a  cab  to  Lord 
Derby's,  and  the  upshot  of  his  visit  is  well  known.  What  is 
not  so  well  known,  and  Greenwood  never  referred  to  it  after- 
wards, is  that  Lord  Beaconsfield,  according  to  him,  was,  or 
pretended  to  be,  at  first  unfavourable  to  the  project.  An- 
other point  is  that  he  made  not  a  shilling  by  the  business 
•himself  in  the  way  of  purchasing  shares  on  the  market; 
neither  did  the  two  men  to  whom  he  originally  mentioned 
the  matter.  For  sheer  folly  this  piece  of  quixotry,  under 
the  conditions  of  our  time,  in  my  opinion,  beats  the  record. 
Greenwood,  who  conceived  the  plan,  died  a  poor  man, 
Traill  was  certainly  not  rich,  and  the  writer  of  these  memories 
is  perennially  short  of  cash.  More  fools  we. 

I  was,  for  some  years,  in  the  habit  of  contributing  to  the 
Pall  Mall,  in  addition  to  anonymous  articles  and  criticism 
letters  signed  "H."  These  letters  more  than  once  brought 
me  into  public  controversies  outside  the  paper,  when  I  was 
invariably  sure  of  Greenwood's  support.  One  of  these  was 
in  regard  to  the  famous  traveller  and  newspaper  correspond- 
ent, H.  M.  Stanley.  I  met  Stanley  on  his  return  from  the 


JOURNALISM  151 

Ashanti  Campaign  in  company  with  George  Henty,  Melton 
Prior,  and  others  who  had  been  out  with  that  expedition. 
Although  he  was  pleasant  enough  to  me,  his  personality  did 
not  make  at  all  a  favourable  impression  upon  me,  and  he 
certainly  was  of  quite  a  different  calibre  from  such  men  as 
Sir  Richard  Burton,  Captain  Grant,  and  others,  his  con- 
temporaries, whom  likewise  I  knew.  When  in  1873  he 
wrote  an  elaborate  description  to  the  Daily  Telegraph  of 
how  he,  with,  as  it  seemed  to  me,  no  sufficient  justification 
whatever,  shot  down  numbers  of  African  natives  at  Bam- 
bireh  just  to  "mak'  sicker,"  as  the  Scotch  might  say,  I 
attacked  him,  being  at  the  time  a  member  of  the  Royal 
Geographical  Society  myself. 

I  did  this  not  only  because  Stanley's  methods  were  brutal 
and  cruel  in  themselves,  but  because  such  behaviour  was 
quite  certain  to  put  in  jeopardy  the  lives  of  any  white  men 
who  followed  him  on  the  same  route.  I  myself  had  seen 
something  of  that  sort  of  thing  in  Polynesia.  Stanley's 
friends,  of  course,  objected  to  my  criticisms,  and  defended 
him  as  well  as  they  could.  But  I  think  I  got  the  better  of 
the  argument.  At  any  rate  I  proposed  a  vote  of  censure 
upon  him  at  the  Royal  Geographical  Society.  I  had  at 
that  time,  and  for  several  years  afterwards,  no  experience 
in  public  speaking.  So  when  I  rose  to  move  my  resolution 
of  censure  I  was  unable  to  make  head  against  the  organised 
opposition  which  I  met  with  all  round  me.  Stanley  was 
famous :  I  was  comparatively  unknown.  I  had,  therefore, 
a  good  opportunity  of  judging  of  the  sort  of  conduct  my 
class  considers  fair  and  decent  when  any  one  takes  up  a 
case  on  behalf  of  mere  "niggers,"  who  don't  count,  es- 
pecially when  the  guilty  person  happens  to  be  more  or  less 
of  a  popular  hero.  I  was  howled  down,  and  the  Royal 
Geographers  present  thought  that  was  the  end  of  it.  Not 
so,  however.  Colonel  Yule,  a  member  of  the  Council  of  the 
Society,  was  of  opinion  I  ought  to  have  been  heard,  and 


152  THE  RECORD  OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

took  up  the  case  himself.  He  and  I  wrote  and  published 
a  joint  pamphlet,  the  matter  was  reopened,  and  Stanley's 
methods,  as  explained  by  himself,  were  held  to  need  still 
further  explanation  when  he  came  home.  That  was  all  the 
satisfaction  we  could  get.  But  I  still  believe  my  action  at 
that  time,  and  then  Colonel  Yule's  chivalrous  behaviour, 
for  feeling  ran  very  high  even  against  the  respected  editor 
of  Marco  Polo's  works,  did  something  to  check  filibustering 
journalistic  missioners  in  their  ruthless  destruction  of 
natives  of  the  countries  they  explore. 


CHAPTER  X 

INDIA 

SHORTLY  afterwards  I  began  my  studies  of  India  seriously . 
I  had  met  James  Geddes,  the  hero  of  the  famine  in  Orissa, 
in  1866,  two  or  three  years  before,  and  had  read  his  pam- 
phlet "The  Logic  of  Indian  Deficit,"  being  a  reprint  of  his 
evidence  before  the  committee  of  the  House  of  Commons. 
But  this  had,  for  the  time  being,  passed  out  of  my  mind, 
and  I  approached  the  economics  and  politics  of  India  by 
quite  another  route.  At  this  period,  though  I  was  a  thorough 
Radical  and  democrat  in  home  and  colonial  affairs,  I  held 
the  profound  conviction  that  British  rule  in  India  was  bene- 
ficial to  its  peoples;  that  the  suppression  of  the  Mutiny, 
though  disfigured  by  hideous  English  crimes,  was  on  the 
whole  justifiable;  and  that  it  was  desirable  to  take  the 
strongest  possible  measures  to  ward  off  from  Hindustan  the 
menace  of  Russian  aggression.  Even  Geddes'  arguments 
failed  to  shake  my  belief  in  the  beneficence  of  our  rule. 

And  this  perhaps  was  natural  enough.  I  had  been 
brought  up  in  an  atmosphere  of  imperialism,  so  far  as  India 
was  concerned.  My  family  on  both  sides  had  been  closely 
connected  with  that  great  country  for  several  generations. 
Colonel  Hyndman  disarmed  M.  Raymond's  force  at  the 
Nizam's  Court  in  1802,  close  relatives  of  mine  had  held 
posts  under  the  old  East  India  Company,  one  of  my  uncles, 
General  Prescott,  had  spent  forty  years  of  his  life  in  the 
Company's  service  in  the  Madras  Presidency,  and  another 
uncle,  Colonel  Mayers,  had  gone  up  Central  India  with  Sir 
Hugh  Rose's  (Lord  Strathnairn's)  column  in  its  famous 

153 


154  THE   RECORD  OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

march  during  the  Mutiny,  in  command  of  the  86th.  So  it 
was  natural,  as  I  say,  that  I  should  have  the  common 
opinion  of  the  educated  well-to-do  class  about  our  domi- 
nance in  Hindustan. 

Through  my  old  college  friend  Robert  Dobbs  I  made  the 
acquaintance  of  one  of  the  most  remarkable  men  I  ever 
encountered,  though  few  appreciated  the  great  faculties  which 
I  believe  were  latent  in  him,  and  with  the  exception  of  Sir 
John  Gorst  none,  I  think,  remain  in  active  life  who  were 
intimate  with  Tom  Palmer  of  Hyderabad.  He  was  a  son 
of  the  head  of  the  great  banking  house  of  Palmer  &  Co.  of 
Hyderabad,  ruined  by  Sir  Charles  Metcalfe ;  his  mother  was 
one  of  the  princesses  or  Begums  of  the  Moguls  of  Delhi. 
He  looked  it.  Tall,  powerful,  and  dark-complexioned,  with 
keen  eyes,  a  strong  nose,  magnificent  teeth  and  a  firm 
mouth  and  chin,  his  whole  appearance  was  that  of  one  who, 
in  a  stirring  time,  would  be  a  capable  and  ruthless  leader  of 
men.  He  was  far  more  proud  of  his  Indian  than  of  his 
English  blood,  though  this  was  apparent  rather  from  what 
he  did  not,  than  from  what  he  did,  say. 

Strange  stories  were  told  of  him  which,  though  I  never 
accepted  them  as  true,  could  scarcely  be  regarded  as  impos- 
sible when  studying  his  face  in  repose.  One  was  that  the 
incident  related  by  Sir  William  Russell  of  a  man  of  his 
blood,  on  the  British  side,  left  in  charge  of  Allahabad  during 
the  Mutiny,  applied  to  him.  He  had,  so  it  was  said,  many 
creditors  in  that  city  when  he  entered  upon  his  duties. 
There  were  none  left  when  he  gave  up  control.  It  had  been 
necessary  to  hang  them  all  for  nefarious  dealings  with  the 
enemy.  I  have  never  myself  believed  this  of  Palmer  at 
all.  When  some  one  in  London  recounted  it  to  him  as  laid 
to  his  charge,  all  he  said  was:  "I  heard  that  tale  myself  as 
I  went  up  from  Allahabad  to  Delhi."  But  apocryphal  as 
the  tale  undoubtedly  was,  what  Palmer  actually  did  on  one 
occasion  here  in  London  gives  some  idea  of  his  determined 


INDIA  155 

character.  He  used  to  have  chambers  on  the  very  top 
floor  at  5  Paper  Buildings  Temple.  A  certain  Colonel  of 
his  acquaintance  had  contrived  by  misrepresentation  and  a 
long  skilfully-laid  plot  to  cozen  Palmer  out  of  £800.  Palmer 
later  learned  that  this  Colonel  had  come  into  possession  of  a 
considerable  sum  in  ready  money,  which  was  lying  at  his 
bank.  Palmer  somehow  contrived  to  inveigle  this  gentle- 
man to  his  chambers.  Once  there  the  astonished  colonel 
found  himself  looking  into  the  muzzle  of  a  .45  Colt  revolver, 
with  Palmer's  relentless  eyes  taking  careful  aim  at  the  other 
end  of  the  weapon.  "Now,"  quoth  Palmer,  "it  took  you, 
Colonel  -  — ,  eighteen  months  to  rob  me  of  that  £800 ;  it 
won't  take  you  five  minutes  to  pay  me  back."  A  cheque 
on  the  Colonel's  bank  was  ready  drawn ;  within  the  five 
minutes,  after  some  bootless  expostulation,  the  Colonel  duly 
signed  it ;  a  few  seconds  thereafter  he  was  comfortably  dis- 
posed of  in  the  chambers,  incapable  temporarily  of  utter- 
ance or  motion,  and  carefully  locked  in,  while  Palmer  went 
out  and  cashed  the  cheque.  Primitive  in  method,  but 
effective  in  result. 

Such  was  the  man  who,  acting  as  confidential  agent  in 
London  for  the  Nizam,  led  me  to  consider  much  more  care- 
fully than  I  had  considered  hitherto  our  relations  to  the 
peoples  of  India.  The  matter  in  which  he  was  interested 
was  to  obtain  the  restoration  of  the  provinces  known  as  the 
Berars  to  the  ruler  of  Hyderabad.  The  grounds  upon 
which  such  restoration ^was  thought  to  be  probable  were: 
(1)  The  justice  of  the  case  itself;  (2)  the  invaluable  ser- 
vices rendered  by  Sir  Salar  Jung,  the  then  Dewan  or  Prime 
Minister  of  Hyderabad,  to  the  British  Government  during 
the  Mutiny;  (3)  the  fact  that  only  a  few  years  before,  in 
1868,  Lord  Salisbury  and  Sir  Stafford  Northcote  had  re- 
turned Mysore  to  native  rule ;  (4)  the  very  favourable 
disposition  of  the  Queen  herself,  who  was  kept  privately 
informed  as  to  the  whole  affair. 


156     THE  RECORD  OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

The  justice  of  the  case  ought  alone  to  have  been  suffi- 
cient to  ensure  success.  The  Government  had  indeed  no 
answer  whatever  to  the  claim  put  forward.  The  facts  and 
the  correspondence  were  marshalled  and  summarised  by 
Mr.  Seymour  Keay,  whose  pamphlet  on  "  Spoiling  the  Egyp- 
tians" afterwards  made  so  great  a  stir,  and  a  more  masterly 
presentment  of  a  political  demand  was  never  made.  But 
it  was  exceedingly  voluminous  and  practically  unreadable. 
Palmer  asked  me  to  go  through  the  statements,  and,  if  I 
were  convinced  of  the  soundness  of  the  Nizam's  position, 
that  I  should  put  the  whole  thing  into  the  form  of  a  pam- 
phlet. I  read  it  all  in  detail,  looked  up  the  references, 
mastered  the  official  arguments,  and  in  the  end  I  wrote  a 
pamphlet  on  the  subject  entitled  " Indian  Policy  and  Eng- 
lish Justice." 

There  were  some  interesting  and  even  amusing  episodes 
in  the  course  of  the  campaign  which  followed.  Palmer,  for 
example,  was  anxious  to  have  a  high  legal  opinion  upon  the 
whole  case.  So  it  was  laid  before  a  leading  Q.C.  of  the 
period,  Karslake,  I  think,  was  his  name.  He  gave  his 
views  on  the  matter  in  somewhat  rhetorical  form  and 
wound  up  with  the  phrase,  "But  in  State  affairs  of  this 
kind  the  ultimate  appeal,  when  all  is  said,  must  lie  with  the 
God  of  Battles."  Palmer,  who  chanced  to  be  a  little  deaf, 
did  not  hear  this  last  sentence ;  so,  putting  his  hand  to  his 
ear,  he  leant  forward,  and  addressing  Karslake  gravely 
asked,  "To  whom,  sir,  did  you  say  the  ultimate  appeal  in 
this  important  cause  would  lie?"  And  Karslake  seemed  a 
little  annoyed  that  the  others  present  all  laughed.  Mean- 
while, as  I  say,  not  only  the  Government  of  the  day  but 
the  Queen  herself  was  kept  in  full  touch  with  the  Nizam's 
pretensions. 

This  last  underground  communication  was  arranged 
through  one  Lothrein,  whom  Palmer  had  chanced  to  know 
well  in  Germany  many  years  before,  and  who  had  been  in 


INDIA  157 

the  intimate  confidence  of  Prince  Albert.  Lothrein's  in- 
fluence over  Queen  Victoria  may  be  judged  by  the  fact  that 
when  all  her  Councillors,  all  her  Court  women,  and  even 
the  illustrious  John  Brown  himself  had  failed  to  induce  this 
royal  lady  to  sign  State  documents  to  the  validity  of  which 
her  signature  was  essential  —  and  they  would  sometimes  be 
left  to  accumulate  for  months  at  a  time  —  Lothrein  was 
sent  for  as  a  last  resource.  He  did  not  relish  the  job  at  all; 
but  he  never  failed  by  his  personal  influence  and  his  touch- 
ing appeals  to  the  memory  of  "the  great  and  good"  to 
induce  Queen  Victoria  whom  three  realms  obeyed  to  fulfil 
the  duties  she  was  paid  to  perform.  And  in  this  matter  of 
the  Berars  Lothrein,  for  old  friendship's  sake,  actively  be- 
stirred himself.  The  impropriety  of  the  proceedings  of  the 
Government  of  India  was  laid  bare  before  Queen  Victoria 
herself  in  all  its  iniquity,  and  everything  goes  to  show  she 
was  personally  strongly  in  favour  of  justice  being  done.  In 
fact,  when  Sir  Salar  Jung  started  from  India  for  England, 
there  can  be  little  doubt  that  he  came  over  with  some 
pledge  from  the  highest  quarters  that  the  Berars  should  be 
given  back  —  as  I  don't  think  any  impartial  reader  of  the 
evidence  can  deny  they  ought  to  have  been  —  and  that  he 
should  return  in  triumph  to  Hyderabad  as  the  benefactor 
of  his  country. 

But  luck  is  everything  in  politics.  No  sooner  did  Salar 
Jung  arrive  in  Europe  than  ill-fortune  began  to  dog  his 
footsteps.  He  fell  downstairs  at  his  hotel  in  Paris  and 
broke  his  leg.  This  was  not  only  a  serious  matter  for  him, 
as  injuring  his  health  and  affecting  his  nerves,  but  it  threw 
all  arrangements  behind  on  this  side  of  the  Channel.  When 
he  came  to  London,  therefore,  he  was  in  no  good  physical 
or  mental  condition  for  his  encounter  with  the  India  Office, 
which  surrounded  him  with  its  agents  and  did  everything 
possible  to  make  him  politically  uncomfortable.  He  felt 
this  and  said  sadly,  "I  am  not  the  man  in  London  that  I 


158  THE  RECORD  OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

am  in  Hyderabad/'  Nevertheless,  and  in  spite  of  all  in- 
trigues and  mistakes,  it  was  understood  and  agreed  that 
when,  at  the  close  of  his  visit,  the  Dewan  went  down  to 
Osborne  to  take  his  leave  of  the  Queen  he  should  formally 
ask  for,  and  Victoria  should  herself  concede,  the  restoration 
of  the  lost  provinces.  So  Salar  Jung  went  to  the  Isle  of 
Wight  on  this  historic  mission,  arrived  at  Osborne,  and  was 
at  once  ushered  into  the  presence  of  the  Queen  as  arranged. 
She,  so  it  is  averred,  went  forward  three  steps  to  meet  him, 
and  the  Eastern  statesman  was  so  overwhelmed  by  this  act 
of  condescension  on  the  part  of  his  Empress  that  he  actually 
forgot  to  ask  for  the  Berars  at  all.  At  any  rate  he  did  not 
get  them  and  went  back  empty-handed  to  India. 

My  own  opinion  is  that  Sir  Salar  Jung  had  been  threatened 
by  certain  personages  in  London  as  to  what  should  befall 
Hyderabad,  if  he  ventured  to  take  advantage  of  the  good 
dispositions  of  the  British  Government  and  the  Queen,  and 
that  at  the  last  moment,  in  his  enfeebled  state  of  health, 
his  nerve  failed  him.  In  any  case  the  Berars  were  not 
surrendered,  and  remain  under  British  dominance  to  this 
day.  Probably  in  the  long  run  this  was  just  as  well,  for 
their  surrender  would  have  given  an  entirely  false  impres- 
sion of  the  intention  of  our  middle  class  to  do  justice  in 
other  directions. 

The  contentions  of  the  official  apologists  in  favour  of 
retaining  possession  of  the  Nizam's  provinces,  in  contraven- 
tion of  treaty  rights  and  common  honesty,  were  mainly 
based  —  as  the  God  of  Battles  could  not  decently  be  called 
in  as  a  final  Court  of  Appeal  on  the  record  of  official  docu- 
ments —  upon  the  assumption  that  the  people  under  British 
rule  were  much  better  off  in  every  way  than  under  native 
rule.  I  therefore  set  myself  to  inquire  whether  this  was 
really  the  case,  and  I  will  say  this,  that  I  spared  myself 
neither  time,  trouble,  nor  expense  to  enable  me  to  arrive  at 
the  right  conclusion.  I  began  my  investigations,  as  I  have 


INDIA  159 

already  said,  with  a  strong  feeling  as  to  the  beneficence  of 
our  rule  in  Hindustan,  and  I  confined  myself,  in  the  first 
instance  at  least,  to  the  study  of  official  reports  and  his- 
tories and  books  written  by  Anglo-Indians  of  repute. 

I  discovered  to  my  astonishment  and  regret  that  Report 
after  Report  and  Commission  after  Commission  proved  the 
existence  of  such  terrible  and  ever-increasing  poverty  among 
the  agricultural  population  of  India  that  I  began  to  doubt 
whether  our  rule  could  possibly  be  as  good  as  it  was  stated 
to  be.  The  statistics  of  famine  told  on  the  same  side,  and  I 
bethought  me  of  Geddes'  views,  which  I  had  not  before  fully 
accepted,  and  read  his  pamphlet  and  evidence  over  again. 
Then  I  found  that  even  such  well-known  men  as  Sir  William 
Sleeman,  Mountstuart  Elphinstone,  Lord  Teignmouth,  Major 
Evans  Bell,  Colonel  Osborne,  had  been  greatly  troubled  as 
to  the  steady  impoverishment  of  the  common  people  when 
they  were  transferred  from  native  to  European  administra- 
tion, and  attributed  this  entirely  to  the  defects  of  our 
administration. 

I  also  went  thoroughly  into  the  figures  of  the  Public 
Works  Department,  and  was  horrified  at  the  extravagance, 
incompetence,  and  jobbery  admitted  to  have  gone  on  even 
by  officials  themselves.  The  methods  of  taxation  were  next 
examined,  and  these  seemed  to  me  bad  in  principle  and  very 
onerous  in  exaction.  The  subject  quite  overmastered  me. 
Every  minute  of  my  spare  time  was  given  to  India,  and 
volumes  of  Blue  Books  on  India  filled  up  the  house.  Then 
came  the  series  of  frightful  famines  from  1876-1879,  and  I 
persuaded  Greenwood  to  allow  me  to  set  forth  my  new 
opinions  in  his  paper  over  my  initial  "H."  I  had  not 
written  much  before  the  letters  made  a  stir. 

People  would  not  believe  that  what  I  stated  was  drawn 
entirely  from  official  documents,  without  garbling  or  mis- 
representation. A  committee  of  the  House  of  Commons 
was  then  sitting,  of  which  Professor  Fawcett,  who  had  been 


160     THE  RECORD  OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

my  lecturer  in  Political  Economy  when  I  was  at  Trinity, 
chanced  to  be  chairman.  Mr.  Fawcett  had  no  idea,  of 
course,  who  "H"  was.  But  he  wrote  to  the  editor  and  re- 
quested that  as  "H"  evidently  knew  much  more  about  the 
Public  Works  Department  and  Indian  finance  generally 
than  any  of  the  witnesses  who  had  given  evidence,  "H" 
should  submit  himself  for  examination.  As,  however,  I 
had  never  been  in  India,  and  my  knowledge  had  been  ob- 
tained from  sources  open  to  all  the  world,  Greenwood  and 
I  decided  it  was  better  I  should  not  appear  before  the  com- 
mittee. I  am  inclined  to  think  now  this  was  a  mistake. 
But  the  result  was  that  Mr.  James  Knowles  of  the  Nine- 
teenth Century,  learning  that  I  was  "H, "  offered  me  as  much 
space  as  I  could  want,  in  reason,  to  state  my  case  in  his 
Review.  It  was  a  great  opportunity,  and  I  resolved  to 
take  full  advantage  of  it. 

I  have  seen  such  strange  coincidences  occur  during  my 
long  life  that  I  am  driven  to  the  conclusion  that  we  are 
unable  to  account  for  not  a  few  of  the  incidents  which 
greatly  affect  the  current  of  our  lives.  The  matter  to  which 
I  now  refer  was  an  apparent  trifle,  yet  it  meant  a  great  deal 
to  the  completeness  of  the  case  for  India.  I  had  finished 
my  paper,  and  was  about  to  send  it  off  to  the  Nineteenth 
Century,  feeling  that  I  had  not  been  able  to  put  the  statis- 
tical part  of  it  as  clearly  and  convincingly  as  it  should  have 
been  put,  when  I  strolled  into  Messrs.  Kings ',  the  Parlia- 
mentary booksellers,  then  in  King  Street,  which  has  since 
been  pulled  down.  I  used  at  that  time  to  go  there  fre- 
quently for  Indian  books  and  papers.  As  I  left  the  shop  I 
noticed  a  booklet  from  which  the  cover  had  been  torn,  and 
the  words,  The  Poverty  of  India,  in  heavy  black  letters  on 
a  white  ground,  stared  up  at  me.  If  the  cover  had  remained 
I  certainly  should  not  have  noticed  it.  "What  is  that?" 
I  asked.  "Only  a  mass  of  figures,"  was  the  reply.  I  at 
once  seized  the  little  volume,  and  found  that  Mr.  Dadabhai 


INDIA  161 

Naoroji  had  therein  placed  at  my  disposal  precisely  the 
statistics  about  India  which  completed  my  own  work. 
The  article  was  published  under  the  title  Mr.  Knowles 
chose  for  it,  " The  Bankruptcy  of  India,"  as  the  first  paper 
in  the  Nineteenth  Century  for  October  1878. 

As  I  look  back  over  those  three-and-thirty  years  I  won- 
der at  the  sensation  it  made.  The  article  was  immediately 
translated  into  nearly  every  European  language,  as  well  as 
into  more  than  one  of  the  Indian  tongues.  Upwards  of 
thirty  offers  to  reply  to  it  from  distinguished  writers  poured 
in  upon  the  editor  of  the  Nineteenth  Century,  and  the  sub- 
ject was  hotly  discussed  everywhere.  I  was  told  con- 
fidentially that  I  should  be  hopelessly  crushed  under  the 
weight  of  metal  that  was  being  brought  to  bear  upon  me, 
and  so  on.  But  my  years  of  reading  and  reflection  on  this 
great  issue  had  given  me  confidence,  and  I  felt  sure  I  was 
right.  Nevertheless,  I  awaited  the  criticisms  with  anxiety, 
fearful  that  I  might  have  made  some  irretrievable  blunder. 
My  three  principal  antagonists  were  Sir  Erskine  Perry  in 
the  Nineteenth  Century,  Mr.  John  Morley  in  the  Fortnightly 
Review,  and  Sir  Juland  Danvers  in  Fraser's  Magazine.  I 
found  it,  however,  even  easier  than  I  anticipated  to  reply 
effectively  to  my  assailants,  and  the  influence  of  my  re- 
joinder was  far  greater  than  I  could  possibly  have  anticipated. 

I  had  formulated  in  my  mind  a  definite  policy  in  regard 
to  India  and  Asia  generally,  which  called  for  the  re-establish- 
ment of  genuine  Indian  rule  throughout  Hindustan,  under 
light  English  leadership,  the  terrible  drain  of  produce  with- 
out commercial  return  being  stanched.  Thus  India  from 
then  onwards  would,  as  I  believed,  have  gained  steadily  in 
wealth  and  have  become,  on  friendly  terms  with  us,  one  of 
the  finest  Empires  the  world  has  ever  seen.  That,  I  say, 
was  my  belief  then,  that  is  still  my  conviction  now.  It 
would  have  been  a  magnificent  attempt  to  make  up  for  our 
criminal  and  ruthless  plunder  at  the  beginning,  and  the 


162  THE  RECORD  OP  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

cold-blooded  economic  exploitation  of  the  middle,  of  our 
regime,  to  have  helped  forward  the  splendid  peoples  of 
India  to  take  up  their  rightful  position  in  the  world  at  its 
close.  Having  convinced  myself  that  our  system  was  in- 
jurious to  India  and  really  harmful  to  ourselves,  I  thought 
no  time  should  be  lost  in  remedying  our  blunders  and  in 
establishing  a  new  system. 

But  I  had  another  object  in  view  which  I  only  disclosed 
to  a  few  friends  and  partly  through  them,  and  partly  directly, 
to  the  statesmen  who  at  this  time  agreed  with  me  and  were 
afterwards  prepared  to  carry  out  the  policy.  During  my 
travels  in  Australia  and  America,  I  had  become  of  one  mind 
with  those  who  held  that  in  the  near  future  China  would  - 
at  this  period  Japan  was  scarcely  thought  of  —  adopt  Eu- 
ropean weapons  and  methods  of  warfare  and  claim  all,  and 
perhaps  a  good  deal  more  than  all,  the  territory  she  had  ever 
held  in  Asia.  The  bulk  of  the  population  of  India  is  of  the 
same  Aryan  stock  ;is  our  <>\\  n  and  its  inhabitants  havr  good 
historic  reasons  for  fearing  Mongolian  domination.  A  self- 
governing,  powerful  Empire  of  India,  therefore,  with  her 
300,000,000  of  population,  supported  by  Great  Britain, 
would  have  presented  a  formidable  barrier  to  any  hostile 
Chinese  movement,  while  there  could  be  little  danger  of 
similar  aggression  on  the  part  of  the  Indians  themselves. 

It  seems  strange  at  the  present  time,  but  it  is  neverthe- 
less the  fact,  that  at  that  period,  following  upon  my  reply 
to  my  critics,  the  Conservative  Party  accepted  this  policy. 
After  all,  this  was  no  more  than  to  carry  out  on  a  larger 
scale  the  principles  which  Lords  Salisbury  and  Iddesleigh 
had  already  adopted  in  regard  to  Mysore.  However  that 
may  be,  those  two  noblemen,  with  Lord  Cranbrook,  who 
was  then  Secretary  of  State  for  India,  and  Mr.  Edward 
Stanhope  the  Parliamentary  Under  Secretary,  as  well  as 
Sir  Louis  Mallet  the  Permanent  Under  Secretary,  whom  I 
saw  almost  daily,  were  all  in  favour  of  making  a  new  depar- 


INDIA  163 

ture;  and  Mr.  Edward  Stanhope,  who  was  my  close  per- 
sonal friend,  was  kind  enough  to  reserve  for  me  a  seat 
" under  the  gallery"  in  the  House  of  Commons,  in  order 
that,  as  he  pleased  to  say,  "you  may  hear  the  beginning  of 
your  policy  proposed  to  the  House  of  Commons." 

I  had  seen  before  this  a  very  great  deal  of  Sir  George 
Kellner,  who  was  then  Lord  Salisbury's  confidential  assistant 
at  the  Foreign  Office,  and  he  told  me  that  Lord  Salisbury 
was  quite  satisfied  as  to  the  soundness  of  my  contentions; 
and  Lord  Iddesleigh  more  than  once  confirmed  this  view  to 
me  when  I  met  him,  as  I  frequently  did  then,  in  private 
society.  Lord  Cranbrook  being  also  on  the  same  side,  I 
had  good  reason  to  hope  that  this  policy  would  be  pushed 
to  its  legitimate  conclusion;  as  it  seemed  scarcely  possible 
that,  even  if  the  Conservatives  were  defeated  at  a  General 
Election,  the  Liberals,  who  always  claimed  to  have  a  deep 
sympathy  with  India,  would  fail  to  take  up  and  even  to 
extend  a  systematic  change  thus  publicly  begun.  If  free- 
dom was  desirable  for  the  Servians  and  Bulgarians,  it  could 
scarcely  be  less  advantageous  to  the  peoples  of  India  with 
their  ancient  and  glorious  civilisation. 

Unfortunately  all  these  legitimate  anticipations  were 
entirely  falsified.  Immediately  the  Liberal  Government 
took  office  after  the  General  Election  of  1880,  every  reform 
in  India  which  the  Conservatives  had  introduced  was  set 
aside,  and  all  the  old  jobs  and  abuses  were  revived  by  Mr. 
Gladstone  and  Lord  Hartington.  This  deliberate  set-back 
arrested  the  whole  current  of  events  and,  sad  to  say,  from 
that  time  to  this  the  miserable  system  of  draining  India  of 
her  wealth  to  the  extent  of  upwards  of  £30,000,000  a  year 
for  the  benefit  of  the  well-to-do  classes  in  the  United  King- 
dom —  Ireland  has  had  her  full  share  in  this  nefarious  busi- 
ness —  and  the  crushing  out  of  all  initiative  and  vigour 
among  the  Indian  population  has  been  relentlessly  kept  up 
by  both  the  English  political  factions.  Though  I  have 


164  THE  RECORD  OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

never  ceased  to  work  and  agitate  for  India,  this  failure  to 
continue  my  policy  of  justice  and  development  in  1880  has 
always  been  for  me  the  saddest  disappointment  of  my  life. 
But  my  experience  in  regard  to  our  two  factions  is  that, 
when  in  office,  alike  in  India,  in  Egypt,  and  even  in  South 
Africa,  outside  of  the  infamous  and  disastrous  Transvaal 
War,  the  Liberals  are  worse  than  the  Tories.1 

I  have  dealt  at  some  length  with  this  episode  in  regard 
to  India,  not  only  because  of  the  vast  importance  of  right 
dealing  towards  300,000,000  of  people  but  on  account  of  an 
infinitely  smaller  matter,  though  interesting  to  some,  the 
effect,  namely,  which  it  had  upon  my  career.  I  may  men- 
tion that  from  1874  onwards  I  began  to  acquire  a  certain 
position  in  the  world  of  journalism  and  letters,  and  the 
strong  line  I  took  against  the  pro- Russian  party  during  the 
Russo-Turkish  War,  while  putting  me  at  variance  with  a 

1  Although  the  late  Duke  of  Devonshire,  then  Lord  Hartington,  knew 
that  I  was  bitterly  opposed  to  the  policy  of  the  Liberal  Government  in 
restoring  all  the  old  jobs  in  India  which  his  Tory  predecessors  had  begun 
to  suppress,  he,  as  Secretary  of  State  for  India,  wrote  me  with  his  own 
hand  the  following  letter  to  my  house : 

INDIA  OFFICE, 

December  18,  1880. 

SIR  —  I  regret  to  find  that  so  long  an  interval  has  elapsed  without  any 
acknowledgement  of  the  receipt  of  your  letter  of  November  15th. 

With  regard  to  the  prospect  of  immediate  scarcity  in  the  North- West 
Province  and  Oudh,  I  am  in  constant  telegraphic  communication  with  the 
Government  of  India,  and  I  am  happy  to  say  that  the  most  recent  ac- 
counts are  more  favourable,  to  the  effect  that  general  rain  has  fallen,  that 
food  is  plentiful,  and  prices  easy,  and  that  no  relief  is  needed.  I  am 
aware  that  the  local  officials  have  sometimes  taken  too  sanguine  a  view 
of  the  condition  of  the  country ;  but  in  this  case  the  tenor  of  reports  pre- 
viously received  induces  me  to  think  that  they  have  been  fully  alive  to 
the  probability  of  scarcity  if  not  of  famine,  and  that  their  present  con- 
fidence is  not  without  foundation. 

With  regard  to  the  general  topics  touched  upon  in  your  letter,  I  can 
only  at  present  say  that  I  have  read  your  observations  with  great  interest, 
and  am  very  sensible  of  the  importance  of  the  subjects  to  which  they  re- 
late. I  do  not  think  that  it  would  serve  any  useful  purpose  for  me  to 
attempt  to  enter  into  a  description  with  you  in  this  letter  upon  them; 
but  I  should  be  very  glad  as  soon  as  I  have  a  little  time  at  my  disposal  to 
have  the  opportunity  of  some  conversation  with  you  on  questions  to 
which  you  have  devoted  so  much  labour  and  thought.  —  I  remain,  yours 
obediently,  HARTINGTON. 


INDIA  165 

certain  school  of  Radicals,  brought  me  into  contact  with 
others,  some  of  whom  became  my  intimate  friends.  I  could 
not  for  the  life  of  me  see  then,  and  I  cannot  see  now,  that 
the  desire  to  emancipate  Christian  populations  from  the 
decaying  domination  of  the  Ottoman  Turk  was  sufficient 
justification  for  supporting  the  growing  and  aggressive 
despotism  of  Russia.  The  latter  seemed  to  me  far  the 
more  dangerous  at  that  time  to  European  democracy,  and 
this  opinion  was  shared  by  many  democrats,  not  only  in 
the  United  Kingdom  but  throughout  Europe.  Anyhow,  I 
took  that  side  as  vigorously  as  I  could,  and  it  amuses  me 
now  to  know  that  many  friends  with  whom  later  I  became 
so  closely  associated,  used  to  denounce  my  letters  signed 
"H"  on  this  subject  as  specially  obnoxious,  though  they 
had  no  idea  who  the  writer  was. 

The  fight  was  a  very  bitter  one,  and  aroused  more  ill- 
feeling  between  the  opponents  than  anything  I  can  remem- 
ber except,  perhaps,  Home  Rule  and  the  Irish  Land  ques- 
tion, which  came  on  a  little  later.  One  result  of  my  activity 
against  Russia  was  that  I  discovered  that  I  could  speak, m< 
and  this  discovery  was  made,  of  all  places  in  the  world,  in 
the  old  St.  James's  Hall.  I  had  never  opened  my  lips  on  a 
public  platform  before,  and  I  began  with  an  amount  of 
nervous  diffidence  which  was  absurd  on  the  part  of  a  man 
of  thirty-seven,  who  knew  what  he  wanted  to  talk  about 
and  had  something  quite  definite  to  say.  However,  much 
to  my  surprise,  I  found  I  got  on  very  well  with  the  audience, 
who  apparently  were  sorry  when  I  sat  down.  I  should 
doubt  whether  anybody  who  has  done  such  an  amount  of 
public  speaking  as  I  have  ever  began  his  apprenticeship  to 
the  platform  at  so  late  an  age,  and,  even  then,  some  three 
years  elapsed  before  I  took  to  agitation  in  earnest. 


CHAPTER  XI 

NOTES  IN  AIMERICA 

ON  February  14,  1876, 1  married  Matilda  Ware,  daughter 
of  William  Ware  of  Newick,  one  of  the  old  race  of  Sussex 
yeomen  farmers,  now  almost  completely  disappeared,  who 
furnished  some  of  the  best  fighting  men  on  land  and  on  sea 
known  to  our  history.  We  had  been  lovers  for  many  years 
before,  and  it  was  fitting  we  should  be  wedded  on  Valen- 
tine's Day.  I  have  been  unlucky,  perhaps,  in  many  ways, 
but  my  good  fortune  in  my  wife  has  made  up  for  it  all. 
Never  once  in  these  five-and-thirty  years  has  she  failed, 
even  when  ill  and  depressed  herself,  to  strengthen  and  sup- 
port me  in  all  my  arduous  work,  and  never,  no  matter  how 
harassing  our  domestic  difficulties,  has  she  lost  heart  or 
complained  of  the  trouble  which  she  has  had  to  face,  quite 
unnecessarily,  in  consequence  of  my  mistakes.  Had  I  fol- 
lowed her  advice  in  business  and  politics  we  should  cer- 
tainly have  held  a  much  more  secure  and  satisfactory 
position  than  that  which  we  occupy  to-day.  But  we  have 
not  finished  even  yet. 

During  the  years  from  1874  to  1880  I  was  called  several 
times  to  America  on  my  private  business  and  became  very 
well  acquainted  with  Salt  Lake  City,  to  which  I  had  paid  a 
hasty  visit  when  crossing  the  continent  in  1870.  Salt  Lake 
City  was  then  a  town  of  about  5000  inhabitants,  under  the 
absolute  control  of  the  Mormons.  A  more  beautiful  place  I 
never  was  in.  It  lay  upon  a  small  flat  valley,  high  above 
the  level  of  the  sea,  surrounded  by  mountains  which  retained 
the  snow  on  their  summits  and  in  the  ravines  until  very  late 
in  the  year.  The  air  was  clear  and  exhilarating  to  a  marvel- 

166 


NOTES  IN  AMERICA  167 

lous  degree,  and  the  views  up  to  and  beyond  the  U.S.  Fort 
Hampton,  where  a  garrison  was  maintained  to  keep  the 
Indians  in  check,  were  magnificent.  The  town  itself  was  in 
its  way  perfect.  Streams  of  rushing  water  ran  down  the 
streets  on  both  sides;  the  houses  were  all  pretty  and  all 
comfortable;  there  were  no  poor,  no  vicious  class,  and,  as 
far  as  I  saw,  no  drunkenness  or  debauchery  outside  of  the 
handful  of  " gentiles"  who  came  there  in  connection  with 
the  mines  established  by  European  companies. 

The  drawbacks  to  Mormonism  and  its  polygamy  have 
often  been  insisted  upon,  and  nobody  could  fail  to  see  the 
rough  and  vulgar  brutality  of  Brigham  Young  with  his 
seventy-two  wives,  or  to  note  the  salacious  propensities  of 
some  of  the  wealthy  elders  who  surrounded  his  successor. 
But,  speaking  only  of  what  I  myself  saw,  I  can  say  most 
decidedly  that  I  never  was  in  a  community  in  my  life  where, 
in  spite  of  the  great  wealth  of  a  handful  of  the  rulers,  the 
mass  of  the  people  were  so  well-to-do  and  healthy  as  they 
were  among  these  Mormons.  The  religion  of  the  prophet 
Smith  lends  itself  easily  to  ridicule.  The  lives  of  even  the 
richest  of  the  Mormons  were  not  conducted  on  the  lines  of 
the  highest  culture.  There  were  harsh  and  cruel  and  dis- 
gusting and  even  terrible  things  done  in  the  name  of  the 
creed  they  had  adopted  by  the  rude  unlettered  men  who 
had  taken  it  up.  Women  who  had  been  induced  to  come 
out  to  Utah  by  the  Mormon  emissaries  frequently  found 
themselves  also  in  a  very  different  position  from  that  which 
had  been  represented  to  them  as  to  be  their  lot. 

Men  of  the  most  desperate  character,  too,  who  had  done 
terrible  deeds  of  murder  and  butchery,  went  abroad  fear- 
lessly. I  myself  sat  at  the  theatre  next  to  a  well-known 
murderer,  one  of  the  Destroying  Angels,  with  his  long  pig- 
tail curled  round  the  top  of  his  head,  who  was  afterwards 
duly  and  comfortably  hanged  for  the  part  he  had  taken  in 
the  hideous  Mountain  Meadows  Massacre;  when  a  great 


168  THE   RECORD  OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

and  well-to-do  company  of  emigrants  to  the  West,  who  had, 
unfortunately  for  them,  been  conducted  through  the  Utah 
territory,  were  attacked  without  warning  by  an  army  of 
Mormons,  disguised  as  Indians,  and  slaughtered  men,  women, 
and  children,  to  the  last  of  the  caravan.  This  massacre  was 
well  known  and  commonly  spoken  of  in  Salt  Lake  City. 

It  was  also  as  inconvenient,  not  to  say  dangerous,  to  run 
counter  to  the  institution  of  Mormonism  as  it  was  to  agitate 
for  the  abolition  of  slavery  in  the  Southern  States  a  few 
years  earlier.  Exceptionally  ardent  reformers  were  apt  to 
be  found  now  and  then  on  the  side-walk,  in  a  state  which 
called  for  no  further  medical  attendance,  as  a  hint  to  others 
not  to  allow  their  fanatical  zeal  for  improvement  to  outrun 
their  discretion.  Wives,  likewise,  who  did  not  obey  their 
husbands  in  the  Lord,  according  to  the  ordinances  promul- 
gated by  Brigham  Young  and  his  disciples,  in  the  name  of 
the  prophet  Smith,  were,  I  have  heard,  not  so  satisfied  with 
the  domestic  arrangements  of  the  saintly  households  as 
those  who  were  more  docile  and  submissive.  Poor  Mor- 
mons, also,  at  work  on  the  irrigated  farms  which  produced 
the  agricultural  wealth  of  the  country,  had  a  laborious  and, 
in  the  first  years,  undoubtedly,  none  too  enjoyable  a  life. 
They  could  not  afford,  certainly,  those  extensions  of  the 
household  and  multiplicity  of  establishments  which  their 
wealthy  co-religionists  were  able  to  keep  up  out  of  the 
produce  of  their  ill-requited  toil. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  Mormon  rule  can  scarcely  have 
been  so  wholly  arbitrary  and  ruthless  as  has  been  depicted 
by  " gentiles"  and  ex-Mormons;  for  my  friend  Godbe, 
himself  an  ex-Elder,  a  pleasing  polygamist  of  the  most 
engaging  manners,  was  allowed  to  start  and  maintain  a 
successful  schismatic  sect  of  his  own.  Attacks  upon  the 
established  Church,  of  Smith  or  Young  as  the  case  may  be, 
were  not  infrequent;  and  although  I  took  some  pains  to 
get  information  about  cruelty  and  injustice  to  women,  I  am 


NOTES  IN  AMERICA  169 

bound  to  say  I  never  could  obtain,  even  privately,  evidence 
of  misbehaviour  which  could  not  be  paralleled  at  any  time 
in  the  most  respectable  families  at  home ;  while  prostitution 
with  its  concomitant  evils  and  diseases  was  wholly  unknown. 

Moreover,  the  higher  pleasures  of  life  were  by  no  means 
lacking.  The  great  theatre  was  always  crowded  at  ex- 
tremely low  prices,  and  some  of  the  very  best  acting  I  ever 
saw  in  my  life  was  in  Salt  Lake  City,  with  the  President,  sur- 
rounded by  his  wives,  present.  The  singing,  also,  in  the 
Mormon  Tabernacle  was  delightful.  As  to  general  conduct, 
there  could  be  no  comparison  whatever,  in  my  time,  between 
the  behaviour  of  the  Mormons  and  that  of  most  of  the  in- 
coming Gentiles.  These  latter  being,  as  they  thought, 
quite  outside  the  range  of  Mrs.  Grundy's  canons  of  social 
life,  carried  on  after  a  fashion  which  disgusted  not  only  the 
Mormons  but  every  decent  Gentile  within  hail  of  them: 
squandering  the  funds  entrusted  to  them  for  their  mines  on 
riotous  living  and  on  the  importation  of  persons  of  notoriously 
bad  character  into  the  City  of  the  Saints.  As  an  impartial 
looker-on,  with  no  prejudices,  I  can  safely  say  that  the 
followers  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth,  as  represented  out  there  in 
Utah,  compared  very  badly  with  the  devotees  and  disciples 
of  Smith  of  Nauvoo ;  and  I  do  not  hesitate  to  assert  that, 
as  between  Smithians  and  Christians,  the  former  could  have 
given  away  to  the  latter  any  amount  of  religious  and  moral 
weight  and  still  have  maintained  the  lead  in  personal  con- 
duct and  general  ethics. 

In  short,  I  have  always  thought  the  Mormons  were  very 
badly  treated.  Their  founder,  having  undergone  the  fa- 
miliar experience  of  experimenters  in  sociology  and  religion, 
finished  up,  St.  Stephen-fashion,  by  being  stoned  to  death 
by  an  orthodox  mob  in  the  Eastern  States.  His  converts, 
with  his  fate  as  a  lesson  to  them  in  American  tolerance, 
betook  themselves  to  the  wilderness  of  Utah,  then  a  wilder- 
ness indeed,  peopled  only  with  buffalo,  grizzly  bears  and  red- 


170  THE  RECORD   OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

skins.  Bare,  bleak,  inhospitable  and  dangerous,  there  the 
polygamist  Mormons  of  the  New  Religion  settled  them- 
selves as  the  Latter  Day  Saints.  Within  a  few  years  this 
desert  was  made  to  blossom  as  a  rose,  by  their  unremitting 
toil,  while  they  established  a  system  of  irrigation-farming 
and  cattle-pasturing  that  was  a  model  to  the  whole  West. 
Their  peculiar  institution  and  their  curious  religious  litera- 
ture attracted  thousands  of  the  half-educated  from  the 
cities  of  Europe  and  the  Eastern  States.  They  had  got  as 
far  away  as  they  could  from  civilisation  in  all  its  barbarism 
in  order  to  give  free  scope  to  their  vulgar  superstition,  and 
only  asked  to  be  let  alone. 

So  they  were  for  a  long  time.  But  the  higher  culture  of 
capitalism  and  conveyance  was  bound  to  follow  them  up, 
and  follow  them  up  it  did.  The  upholders  of,  and  profiters 
by,  the  brothels  and  dens  of  debauchery  in  New  York, 
Philadelphia  and  Chicago  were  horrified  at  the  idea  of  tak- 
ing several  women  to  wife  simultaneously,  instead  of  deal- 
ing with  them,  without  marriage,  successively.  The  higher 
standard  of  this  Christian  morality  was  at  once  apparent, 
and  the  newspapers  proclaimed  widely  how  shocked  all 
decent  people  must  be  at  such  unseemly  social  relations  as 
prevailed  in  Utah.  What  was  much  more  to  the  purpose, 
a  railway  line  was  built  down  from  the  Transcontinental 
Railway,  which  connected  Ogden  with  Salt  Lake  City,  and, 
still  more  important,  rich  mines  were  discovered  in  Mormon 
territory.  From  that  moment,  it  was  certain  that  Mormon 
independence  and  conjugal  impropriety  of  the  polygamous 
type  were  alike  doomed,  and  no  long  time  elapsed  before 
the  shameless  doings  of  the  Latter  Day  Saints  were  sup- 
pressed in  that  district  and  the  more  ardent  of  the  faithful 
went  yet  farther  afield.  Residence  in  Salt  Lake  for  months 
at  a  time  had  made  me  quite  familiar  with  its  people,  both 
saints  and  sinners,  and  I  can  safely  say  that  I  had  there 
with  them  a  very  good  time ;  nor  do  I  see  to  this  day  what 
harm  the  Mormons  did  as  a  self-governing  community. 


CHAPTER  XII 

AMERICAN  NOTES 

AS  I  was  interested  at  the  same  time  in  California  I  saw 
a  good  deal  at  this  period  of  the  great  West  generally, 
and  I  witnessed  on  the  spot  that  tremendous  "boom"  in  the 
Comstock  Mines  with  which  the  names  of  Mackay,  Flood,  Fair 
and  O'Brien  are  indissolubly  associated.  Some  day  I  may 
tell,  from  my  point  of  view,  the  tale  of  that  wonderful  time 
in  San  Francisco  which  has  scarcely  yet  been  adequately 
told  in  Europe.  Perhaps  it  is  difficult  to  record  the  truth, 
the  whole  truth  and  nothing  but  the  truth  about  men  who 
acquired  enormous  wealth  and  became  on  that  account 
United  States  Senators  and  "some  of  our  most  distinguished 
citizens."  However  that  may  be,  San  Francisco  was  a  most 
lively  and  interesting  place  at  this  period,  and  I  should 
doubt  whether  anything  quite  like  it  will  ever  be  seen  again. 
The  vast  mineral  wealth  poured  out  from  the  famous  Con- 
solidated Virginia,  California,  Hale  and  Norcross  and  other 
rich  mines  seemed  inexhaustible.  Shares  in  these  ventures 
went  rocketing  upwards  and  remained  like  fixed  stars  at 
an  amazing  altitude.  Everybody  seemed  to  be  getting 
rich  at  once.  Money  was  easy  to  get,  food  was  exceedingly 
good,  abundant  and  cheap,  hotels  were  luxurious  and  houses 
were  well  built  and  well  found.  It  was  a  most  interesting 
experience,  and  the  more  enjoyable  to  me  that  I  never 
witnessed  the  collapse. 

Here,  first,  in  1870,  I  met  Bret  Harte,  who  had  just 
before  written  and  published  his  Heathen  Chinee,  etc.,  the 
earliest  copy  of  which  I  like  to  fla  tter  myself  I  was  the  first 

171 


172     THE  RECORD  OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

to  bring  to  London.  Bret  Harte  was  undoubtedly  a  man 
of  great  ability  who  somehow  lacked  what  someone  said 
was  the  shortcoming  of  Coleridge,  "the  genius  of  con- 
tinuity" -he  never  did  any  sort  of  justice  to  himself  in 
his  longer  works.  And  it  was  certainly  the  same  with  his 
conversation.  Quiet,  companionable,  shrewd,  and  agree- 
able he  shared  with  his  fellow-San  Franciscan  Henry  George 
the  incapacity  to  convey  a  direct  personal  impression  of  the 
talent,  with  a  clear  streak  of  genius  running  through  it, 
which  he  certainly  possessed.  It  is  impossible  to  go  to  any 
Western  mining  camp  even  to-day  without  recognising  at 
once  the  types  of  men  and  women  which  he  so  artistically 
depicted.  I  had  opportunities  of  judging  of  the  truth  of 
some  of  the  incidents  of  his  stories  quite  close  at  hand. 

Thus,  in  Salt  Lake  City,  I  had  a  most  sad  and  tragic 
experience  of  what  a  thoroughly  bad  woman  can  do  to 
bring  about  battle  and  sudden  death,  and  also  what  "shoot- 
ing on  sight"  means  in  practice.  "Shooting  on  sight"  is  a 
Far  West  institution.  I  never  met  with  it  in  any  other 
part  of  the  world.  Two  men  have  a  really  serious  difference. 
They  part  for  the  time  being  without  actual  bloodshed. 
One  says  to  the  other,  "Next  time  I  meet  you  I  will  shoot 
you  on  sight."  That  is  fair  warning.  It  is  a  perpetual 
challenge  to  a  sudden  duel.  Whichever  of  the  pair  first 
catches  sight  of  his  enemy  after  this  declaration  on  either 
side  has  a  perfect  right  to  shoot  him  at  once  without  any 
farther  warning  whatever,  whether  the  other  party  to  the 
quarrel  is  on  the  look-out  or  not,  and  the  death  of  the 
duellist  who  "hands  in  his  cheques"  is  not  regarded  as 
murder  done  by  the  survivor. 

I  was  going  out  in  the  early  morning  with  a  well-known 
mining  man,  one  Smith,  who  told  me  he  was  about  to  get 
married  to  a  Miss  Rawlinson,  daughter  of  a  very  rich  Mor- 
mon land-owner  of  that  name,  to  look  at  some  mines  in 
Bingham  Canon.  I  waited  for  my  man  till  the  very  last 


AMERICAN  NOTES  173 

moment  to  go  to  the  station  of  the  little  railway  that  took 
us  out  there.  He  as  nearly  as  possible  lost  the  last  tram 
car  —  it  would  have  been  well  for  him  if  he  had  done  so 
altogether  —  only  catching  it  by  running  after  it  and 
shouting  to  us,  who  stopped  the  driver  and  waited  for  him. 
When  we  got  to  the  station  the  train  was  delayed,  and  he 
was  talking  to  a  number  of  his  friends,  the  Rawlinsons  as 
I  afterwards  learnt,  and  he  asked  me  to  secure  seats  for  us 
in  the  smoking  car.  This  I  failed  to  do,  and  told  him  as 
we  boarded  the  train  we  must  go  to  seats  in  the  other  car. 
He  turned  and  went  forward  into  the  other  car  ahead  of  me. 
As  we  walked  slowly  down  the  passage-way,  he  in  front 
and  I  following  behind,  I  saw  a  gaunt-looking  person,  with 
a  long  hanging  tawny  moustache  and  very  bright  eyes,  rise 
up  suddenly  from  one  of  the  seats  on  the  left  of  the  car, 
thrust  out  a  revolver  and  fire  a  shot  into  Smith's  body. 
There  was  immediately  a  rush  out  of  the  car ;  for  the  man 
who  had  fired  stood  with  his  pistol  stretched  out  in  front 
of  him  as  if  intending  to  fire  again.  Smith  had  at  once 
fallen  on  the  floor  of  the  car,  and  I  managed  to  struggle  to 
him  with  a  friend  and  hold  him  up.  Meanwhile,  a  detective 
in  plain  clothes  who  had  got  in  front  of  me,  jumped  forward 
to  the  man  who  had  shot  Smith,  clapped  his  thumb  under 
the  hammer  of  his  revolver,  and  then,  aided  by  a  policeman 
who  had  made  his  way  to  his  side,  seized  the  delinquent 
and  turning  him  round  was  taking  him  off  in  custody  to 
the  other  exit  from  the  car.  Thereupon,  Smith,  who  was 
leaning  heavily  upon  me  and  apparently  dying,  made  a 
tremendous,  unexpected  effort,  wrenched  his  own  revolver 
out  of  his  hip-pocket  and  fired  two  shots  point-blank  right 
into  his  assailant's  back.  The  latter  tore  himself  from  the 
grip  of  the  detective  and  the  other  officer  who  together  held 
him,  jumped  straight  up  so  that  his  head  knocked  hard 
against  the  roof  of  the  car,  and  then  fell  dead  at  Smith's 
feet. 


174  THE  RECORD  OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

All  this  took  place  in  much  less  time  than  it  has  taken 
me  to  write  these  lines.  We  then  lifted  Smith  up,  took 
him  to  the  bare  little  waiting-room  at  the  end  of  the  plat- 
form, and  sent  as  quickly  as  possible  for  a  doctor.  Poor 
Smith  was  in  great  pain  and  groaning  at  intervals,  though 
he  gasped  out  words  which  led  me  to  believe  that  his  success 
in  getting  even  with  his  antagonist  had  given  him  solid 
comfort  through  his  own  approaching  dissolution.  When 
the  doctor  came  he  examined  the  wounded  man  carefully 
and  ordered  him  to  be  borne  gently  to  his  buggy,  but  he 
whispered  in  my  ear  as  we  carried  Smith  along  —  "  Cannot 
last  twenty-four  hours."  And  so  it  proved. 

This  was  a  case  of  " shooting  on  sight,"  and  as  Smith  had 
told  me  nothing  about  any  danger  he  was  incurring  the 
whole  thing  burst  upon  me  as  a  hideous  nightmare;  Smith 
himself  being,  so  far  as  I  had  known  him,  a  quiet  sober 
man  of  business  who  never  disputed  with  any  one  and  never 
went  into  a  bar.  Cherchez  lafemme! 

The  femme  in  this  case  was  Miss  Rawlinson,  the  dying 
man's  betrothed.  She  was  reputed  to  be  by  no  means 
averse  from  flirtation,  and  it  was  said  that  in  more  than 
one  instance  she  had  carried  this  predilection  of  hers  a  very 
long  way.  In  order,  possibly,  to  cover  up  her  own  delin- 
quencies, as  all  afterwards  believed,  she  told  Smith  that 
Mr.  Snedeker,  a  married  man  of  great  respectability,  and  a 
dentist  of  a  high  class  in  Salt  Lake  City,  had  chloroformed 
her  in  his  surgery  and  outraged  her  when  in  that  state. 
Smith,  worked  up  by  this  story  about  Snedeker's  criminal 
treatment  of  his  future  wife,  met  Snedeker,  denounced  him, 
and  told  him  he  would  " shoot  him  on  sight,"  and  went 
round  the  town  proclaiming  his  intention  to  do  so.  Snede- 
ker took  alarm  and  determined  to  leave  the  Territory, 
going  round  by  Bingham  Canon  and  then  by  buggy  to  an- 
other railway,  so  as  to  avoid  any  chance  of  meeting  Smith, 
but  took  a  revolver  with  him.  Smith  by  the  purest  accident 


AMERICAN  NOTES  175 

came  into  the  very  same  car  as  Snedeker,  searching  for  him 
as  Snedeker  naturally  thought,  and  —  the  rest  as  naturally 
followed. 

Smith  did  linger  for  twenty-four  hours,  as  the  doctor 
predicted,  watched  over  and  served  most  assiduously  and 
tenderly  by  his  fellow  Freemasons  —  it  is  wonderful  how 
Freemasonry  really  means  brotherhood  outside  of  these 
islands  —  and  then  was  buried  in  the  cemetery  up  by  the 
military  camp  Fort  Hampton,  Snedeker  having  been  interred 
the  previous  day.  That  funeral  of  Smith's  was  one  of  the 
most  imposing  ceremonies  I  ever  attended.  It  was  con- 
ducted under  full  Masonic  and  Knight  Templar  rites. 
Quite  a  crowd  of  people  gathered  on  the  mountain  side, 
with  the  bright  hills  around  them  and  Salt  Lake  City  lying 
like  a  gem  in  the  valley  below.  There,  in  this  wild  country, 
far  from  the  old  continents,  these  strange  and  ancient  sym- 
bolic formalities  were  gone  through  most  solemnly  by  some 
of  the  roughest  of  rough  Western  men. 

It  all  made  a  great  impression  upon  me,  and  when  the 
arch  of  steel  was  formed  by  the  Knights  Templars  in  their 
costume,  by  stretching  out  their  bare  swords  in  arch  form 
over  the  coffin,  any  sense  of  the  incongruous  faded  from  my 
mind,  and  I  remembered  only  that  I  was  assisting  at  a 
spectacle  to  which  all  present  attached  an  exceptional 
solemnity.  As  the  coffin  was  lowered  into  the  grave,  Miss 
Rawlinson,  who  was  present,  thought  proper  to  go  into 
hysterics.  "Two  good  men  dead  for  that  strumpet!" 
growled  a  voice  behind  me  into  my  ear.  This  sentence 
summed  the  whole  thing  up. 

Coming  down  from  a  big  mine  in  which  I  was  interested, 
a  few  months  later,  I  narrowly  escaped  making  a  close  and 
possibly  final  acquaintance  with  another  great  Western 
"institution."  It  was  in  winter,  and  the  mine  was  9000 
feet  above  the  sea  level.  The  road  down  was  good  in  ordi- 
nary times,  but  just  then  it  was  very  rough  and  largely 


176     THE  RECORD  OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

covered  with  snow  and  ice.  I  started  with  the  driver  of 
the  buggy  in  the  morning  to  go  down  to  Stockton  to  the 
Inn  there  and  the  terminus  of  the  little  railway  from  Stock- 
ton to  Salt  Lake  City.  We  had  barely  got  half-way  down 
when  my  Jehu  began  to  drive  furiously  indeed.  He  sud- 
denly whipped  up  his  cattle,  which  were  a  pretty  speedy 
pair  to  start  with,  and  they  rushed  down  the  descent  as 
hard  as  ever  they  could  go.  There  was  a  precipice  going 
sheer  down  some  hundreds  of  feet  on  one  side  of  us  and  an 
equally  steep  cliff  on  the  other.  Time  after  time  I  thought 
we  must  be  over,  as  we  went  bumping  and  swaying  and 
slipping  along  at  break-neck  speed.  Not  a  word  would  my 
man  say  in  answer  to  inquiries  as  to  what  was  the  matter 
and  why  we  went  so  fast.  At  last  he  pointed  his  whip 
behind  him  and  roared  " Blizzard"  at  the  top  of  his  voice. 
On  we  went  after  that  faster  if  possible  and  more  danger- 
ously. I  felt  our  latter  end  would  surely  come  before  we 
got  to  the  bottom. 

Somehow  or  other,  nevertheless,  we  arrived  safe  and 
sound  at  the  Inn  door.  Out  we  jumped,  loosed  the  harness, 
took  the  horses  into  the  stable,  ran  the  buggy  into  an  out- 
house, and  rushed  inside.  We  had  not  been  under  cover 
five  minutes  before  the  blizzard  broke.  It  was  a  terrific 
scene.  One  tremendous  swirl  of  wind  and  snow  and  hail 
which  seemed  certain  to  sweep  us  clean  away,  Inn  and  all. 
It  was  quite  impossible  to  see  a  yard  ahead,  and  a  man 
who  came  in  from  quite  close  by  said  he  could  not  find  his 
way  at  all,  though  he  was  not  twenty  yards  off,  until  by 
sheer  good  luck  he  came  full  up  against  the  house  and 
groped  round  till  he  came  to  the  door.  He  was  quite  ex- 
hausted and  half-frozen  when  we,  hearing  his  scraping  on 
the  wood,  opened  the  door  just  wide  enough  to  let  him 
through.  I  could  quite  understand  after  this  how  it  might 
happen  that  more  than  one  person  going  out  to  get  wood 
from  a  pile  close  at  hand  in  such  a  blizzard  could  never  get 


AMERICAN  NOTES  177 

back  and  so  perish  miserably.  I  have  not  the  slightest 
doubt  that,  had  not  the  driver  indulged  in  that  terrific  race 
down  the  mountain  side,  we  should  both  have  died  that 
day  of  cold  and  exposure  or,  as  the  owner  of  the  hotel  said 
to  me:  "Guess  if  you  hadn't  hurried  up  some  we'd  have 
struck  your  bones  in  the  Spring." 

In  this  same  Inn  at  Stockton  I  had  another  exciting 
experience,  not  I  believe  uncommon  out  West  but  a  little 
unsettling  when  undergone  for  the  first  time.  I  had  long 
ago  discovered  that  if  you  wish  to  remain  at  peace  with  all 
men  in  uttermost  parts  of  the  earth,  the  best  way  is  to  keep 
clear  altogether  of  gambling  saloons,  to  go  to  the  bar  as 
seldom  as  possible,  and  to  retire  to  bed  at  a  reasonable 
hour.  I  had  carried  out  my  usual  programme  and  gone  to 
bed  at  this  Stockton  Inn,  after  I  had  had  a  bit  of  carouse 
with  the  miners  and  smelters  there,  including  my  own  men 
from  up  above,  when  I  gathered  from  several  revolver  shots 
that  there  was  a  " difficulty"  below.  How  it  happened  I 
had  not  the  remotest  idea :  but  it  is  certain  that  several  of 
the  bullets  came  through  the  ceiling  up  into  my  room  when 
I  was  lying  asleep.  Whether  this  was  a  mauvaise  plaisanterie 
got  up  for  my  special  edification,  or  whether  the  admirable 
shots  below  had  gone  mad  in  their  cups  and  fired  at  large, 
I  do  not  know  to  this  day.  But  having  checked  a  natural 
inclination  to  jump  out  of  bed  I  fell  to  calculating  the  thick- 
ness and  power  of  resistance  to  .45  bullets  possessed  by  the 
mattress  on  which  I  lay.  Possibly  my  carcase  was  saved 
from  perforation  by  that  useful  protection.  At  any  rate  I 
rose  in  the  morning  with  a  whole  skin. 

I  suppose  every  one  who  has  frequently  crossed  the 
Atlantic  has  some  curious  tales  to  tell  of  what  he  has  seen 
himself  or  has  heard  from  his  fellow-passengers.  I  can- 
not claim  to  be  in  possession  of  any  very  interesting  budget, 
but  on  one  of  my  numerous  trips  across  I  became  intimate 
with  Cardinal,  then  Dr.,  Vaughan,  with  whom  I  had  many 


178  THE  RECORD  OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

interesting  conversations.  He  was  returning  from  Texas, 
where  he  had  planted  a  Catholic  Colony,  and,  as  I  had  been 
interested  in  a  famous  tract  of  country  —  owned  by  Dolores 
del  Soto  the  descendant  of  the  Conquistadore  of  that  name 
who  had  married  an  American  doctor  —  which  lay  close  by 
I  knew  something  about  the  difficulties  he  had  had  to 
encounter.  This  led  to  talk  on  other  subjects,  and  we 
became  tolerably  intimate.  Going  down  one  afternoon  into 
the  saloon,  after  walking  on  deck  in  rather  heavy  weather, 
I  found  Dr.  Vaughan  engaged  in  vehement  religious  con- 
troversy with  three  or  four  Presbyterian  ministers  from 
Boston.  I  have  always  liked  Boston,  and  I  shall  ever 
remember  with  pleasure  the  Somerset  Club,  and  a  delightful 
three  weeks  I  spent  long  ago  with  Messrs.  Saltonstall,  Sears 
Endicott,  the  father  of  Mrs.  Joseph  Chamberlain,  and  a  few 
more  Bostonians  in  the  mountain  districts  of  Pennsylvania ; 
but  I  confess  I  have  never  been  able  to  discern  any  attrac- 
tion in  Presbyterian  ministers  from  Boston  either  ashore  or 
afloat. 

I  sat  down  beside  Dr.  Vaughan  to  listen  to  the  argument ; 
for  it  is  extremely  rare  for  a  Catholic  priest  to  allow  himself 
to  be  drawn  into  discussion,  with  those  who  profess  another 
form  of  Christianity,  on  any  religious  topic  whatever. 
However,  there  they  were  in  the  full  blast  of  disputation, 
and  before  very  long  I  was  impelled  to  take  a  share  in  the 
argumentative  fray.  It  was  the  old  story  between  the 
Catholic  and  the  Protestant;  though,  from  my  point  of 
view,  Dr.  Vaughan  got  the  best  of  the  dispute  throughout. 
But  the  appearance  of  a  free-thinker  on  the  scene  settled 
the  matter. 

When  the  issue  turned  upon  tradition,  inspiration,  ecclesi- 
astical lore,  and  the  supernatural  generally,  I  left  the  field 
entirely  to  the  Catholic  priest.  When  the  element  of  reason 
and  private  judgment  was  introduced,  as  against  Vaughan, 
by  the  other  side  I  had  my  little  innings.  The  Bostonians 


AMERICAN  NOTES  179 

did  not  like  this  at  all.  They  were  driven  by  degrees  from 
position  after  position  until  at  last  they  had  no  available 
defence  left.  Then  they  got  up  from  the  table,  and  as 
they  withdrew  one  of  them  said,  "It  is  not  fair  fighting: 
there  is  much  more  difference  between  you  two  on  that  side 
than  there  is  between  ourselves  and  Dr.  Vaughan."  I  re- 
peated this  in  another  form  as  Dr.  Vaughan  and  I  went 
together  up  the  companion  on  to  the  deck;  "Yes,"  he 
said,  "and  it  is  a  difference  that  will  never  be  bridged  over 
either."  Years  afterwards,  when  as  Bishop  of  Salford  Dr. 
Vaughan  excommunicated  Lord  Petre,  and  later  still  when 
he  delivered  that  remarkable  address  in  celebration  of  the 
landing  of  St.  Augustine  at  Ramsgate,  showing  the  direct 
continuity  of  the  belief  and  ceremonial  of  the  Catholic 
Church  from  that  time  until  now,  I  recalled  this  voyage 
across  from  New  York.  It  is  strange  to  meet  in  these  days 
a  man  with  a  profound  belief  in  the  truth  of  his  creed  and 
in  the  efficacy  of  his  own  delegated  spiritual  powers.  But 
Vaughan  undoubtedly  had  these  convictions  strong  upon 
him,  and  his  fine  presence  and  beauty  of  feature  did  much 
to  impress  them  upon  others. 

What  a  different  set  of  people  were  Harpending,  Bill 
Lent,  and  Rhubery.  Yet  those  names  bring  to  mind  one 
of  the  most  elaborate  frauds  ever  engineered,  even  in  con- 
nection with  mining,  as  well  as  a  financial  scandal  that  did 
a  great  deal  to  undermine  the  well-earned  influence  of  the 
Times  and  to  kill  its  famous  editor  John  Delane.  It  was 
perhaps  the  fact  that  I  used  frequently  to  meet  Mr.  Samp- 
son, the  City  editor  of  the  Times,  at  the  house  of  Mr.  Samuel 
Laing,  and  that  I  had  made  the  acquaintance  of  Mr.  John 
Delane  himself  at  his  brother's  house  in  Norfolk,  which, 
apart  from  my  crossing  the  Atlantic  on  friendly  terms  with 
the  three  arch-villains  of  the  piece,  gave  me  a  close  personal 
interest  in  the  entire  plot  and  its  dramatic  sequel.  Of 
course,  when  I  first  met  Messrs.  Harpending,  Lent,  and 


180     THE  RECORD  OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

Rhubery  on  board  the  White  Star  liner  bound  for  New 
York,  I  had  no  idea  whatever  of  the  sort  of  people  they 
were.  One  of  them,  however,  Rhubery,  I  think,  had  a 
berth  in  the  cabin  with  me,  and  Lent  was  convoying  over 
to  San  Francisco  one  of  the  most  charming  young  ladies  I 
ever  saw.  As  neither  of  the  three  conspirators  could  speak 
a  word  of  French,  and  the  girl,  who  had  just  come  out  of  a 
French  convent,  knew  scarcely  a  word  of  English,  Lent  and 
the  others  were  glad  enough  she  should  find  someone  with 
whom  she  could  converse  easily,  and  gradually  I  came  to 
know  the  trio  very  well. 

Also  I  learnt  from  a  fine  specimen  of  the  Western  man 
on  board  something  about  Harpending  and  Lent;  he  evi- 
dently wishing  in  a  kindly  way  to  warn  me  against  my 
company.  "That  fellow  Harpending  just  ought  to  have 
been  strung  up  long  ago.  He  and  two  or  three  others  got 
a  blamed  Southern  pirate  out  of  'Frisco  harbour  during  the 
war,  and  if  I  had  had  my  way  he  would  have  been  hanged 
first  and  tried  afterwards.  Everybody  knew  he  was  at  the 
back  of  it.  What  he  has  been  doing  since  I  don't  know, 
but  I  reckon  he  and  that  Bill  Lent  are  up  to  no  good  any- 
way. The  Englishman  (Rhubery)  may  be  all  right.  I 
never  saw  him  till  now,  but  even  him  I  don't  like  the  looks 
of.  Lent  is  a  '  clever '  fellow  enough  in  his  way ;  but  he  is  a 
sport  all  the  same,  and  if  Harpending  has  him  in  hand, 
Harpending's  boss,  you  bet.  They  have  got  some  game  on 
that  will  hurt  somebody,  and  that  pretty  girl  ought  never 
to  have  been  put  in  Lent's  charge.  I  know  her  friends." 

After  this  I  watched  the  men  more  closely  than  before; 
but  so  far  as  I  was  concerned  there  was  nothing  whatever 
to  object  to,  and  I  spent  far  more  time  with  their  young 
prot£ge*e  than  I  did  with  them,  as  they  were  mostly  gam- 
bling in  the  smoking-room.  However,  they  told  me  they 
were  going  out  on  the  part  of  some  powerful  capitalists  in 
London  and  San  Francisco  to  locate  and  develop  in  Arizona 


AMERICAN  NOTES  181 

the  most  remarkable  deposit  of  precious  stones  ever  yet 
discovered  on  the  planet,  whose  wealth,  if  they  were  not 
wholly  mistaken,  would  astound  the  universe.  They  talked 
of  their  venture  with  the  greatest  enthusiasm,  and  they 
certainly  had  plenty  of  money,  as  was  afterwards  clearly 
shown,  to  push  their  enterprise.  I  told  my  Western  friend 
what  they  said.  "I  don't  credit  their  scheme  any"  was  his 
comment,  "but  what  Harpending  doesn't  know  in  the 
matter  of  salting  claims  ain't  worth  getting  on  to.  I  have 
learnt  that  since  I  came  on  board."  On  arriving  at  New 
York  we  all  parted  company.  I  went  my  own  way,  and  I 
had  soon  forgotten  all  about  the  dark-skinned,  sinister- 
looking  Harpending,  the  cheery,  good-hearted  gambler,  Bill 
Lent,  and  the  quiet,  respectable  Rhubery,  as  well  as  even 
the  pretty  girl  with  her  delightful  French  and  charming 
broken-English.  On  my  return  from  America,  however,  I 
had  occasion  to  go  to  Paris,  and  then  the  whole  scheme 
appeared  from  quite  another  point  of  view. 

I  was  staying  at  the  Hotel  de  1'Amiraute'  in  the  Rue 
Daunou.  This  comfortable  place  was  then  very  empty,  as 
indeed  were  at  that  time  most  Paris  hotels.  Mrs.  Mont- 
gomery Blair  of  Washington,  with  her  two  daughters,  to 
one  of  whom  another  visitor,  Mr.  Louis  Janin,  a  Washing- 
ton barrister,  was  engaged,  Miss  Clara  Louise  Kellogg,  a 
well-known  American  soprano  of  the  day,  and  myself  were 
the  only  guests  who  dined  at  the  table  d'hote,  except  that 
Mr.  W.  H.  Vanderbilt  of  " damn  the  people"  celebrity  used 
to  come  sometimes  to  see  Miss  Kellogg.  Naturally,  we  got 
to  know  one  another  pretty  well.  At  this  time  news  of  the 
wonderful  discovery  of  precious  stones  in  Arizona  came 
over  from  San  Francisco,  and  interested  capitalists  in  Lon- 
don. The  Times,  in  its  City  column,  conducted  by  Mr. 
Sampson,  began  to  throw  doubt  upon  and  to  ridicule  the 
whole  scheme.  Those  who  believed  in  the  discovery  or 
were  concerned  with  the  Harpending-Lent-Rhubery  com- 


182     THE  RECORD  OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

bination  freely  denounced  Sampson  as  attacking  the  project 
merely  because  he  had  not  been  paid  to  support  it,  and 
pointed  to  the  highly  laudatory  report  by  Mr.  Henry  Janin, 
an  expert  whose  ability  and  character  were  beyond  all 
reproach,  as  crucial  evidence  of  the  truth  of  the  story. 
But  the  Times  kept  up  its  attack  upon  the  scheme  day 
after  day.  Every  mail,  however,  brought  long  letters  from 
Henry  Janin  to  his  brother  Louis,  with  whom  I  was  associ- 
ating intimately  every  day  in  the  hotel,  telling  him  privately 
all  he  had  seen  and  assuring  him  that  a  marvellous  new 
deposit  of  gems  had  been  found,  about  which  there  could 
be  no  doubt  whatever,  as  he,  Henry  Janin,  had  dug  up 
specimens  himself.  Louis  Janin  handed  me  the  letters,  and 
had  I  not  seen  Harpending  and  Lent  all  my  suspicions 
would  have  evaporated.  As  it  was,  I  felt  sure  Sampson 
had  some  private  information  from  his  Jew  friends  in  the 
gem  market,  or  he  never  would  have  run  such  a  risk. 

So  the  battle  raged;  but  Henry  Janin's  report  out- 
weighed the  Times  criticism  on  the  other  side  of  the  Atlan- 
tic, and  I  think  Harpending  got  rid  of  the  shares  in  his 
Company.  By  and  by  came  the  catastrophe  on  both  sides 
of  the  Atlantic.  Mr.  Clarence  King,  the  U.S.  Government 
geologist  and  mineralogist,  who  had  surveyed  that  particu- 
lar section  of  Arizona  where  the  deposits  were  located  and 
had  found  no  evidence  whatever  of  diamond  or  other  gem- 
bearing  ground,  believed  his  friend  Henry  Janin  had  been 
taken  in  and  determined  to  go  and  see  for  himself.  He 
went  and  at  once  found  that  the  whole  thing  was  an  elabo- 
rate "  plant,"  which  had  imposed  upon  the  luckless  Janin, 
because  he  had  no  knowledge  whatever  of  gem-bearing 
strata.  All  sorts  of  precious  stones  in  the  rough  had  been 
brought  to  the  spot,  and  buried  just  for  Janin  and  others  to 
find  them.  The  official  expert  said  nothing  but  returned 
post-haste  to  San  Francisco,  rushed  in  to  Janin's  bedroom  at 
the  Palace  Hotel,  got  him  up  at  once  and  persuaded  him 


AMERICAN  NOTES  183 

to  leave  by  the  boat  starting  in  an  hour  or  so  for  Yoko- 
hama, promising  Janin  to  defend  his  honesty  at  the  expense 
of  his  intelligence  during  his  absence.  The  advice  was  good, 
as  he  would  have  been  unsafe  in  San  Francisco.  So  he 
went,  and  Harpending  and  Lent  disappeared. 

They  had,  as  it  appeared,  bought  £30,000  worth  of 
rough  stones  in  Hatton  Garden,  and  had  carefully  buried 
them  in  Arizona.  They  carried  them  across  on  the  trip  I 
made  on  the  White  Star  boat. 

But  that  was  not  the  end  here  in  London  by  any  means. 
Rhubery  brought  an  action  which  was  allowed  to  go  to  trial. 
In  the  course  of  it  Rhubery's  counsel  proved  conclusively 
that  Sampson  had  taken  bribes  from  Baron  Grant  in  con- 
nection with  that  worthy's  companies,  and  the  famous 
Editor  and  the  Manager  of  the  Times  both  received  a  blow 
only  less  severe  than  that  sustained  by  the  credit  of  the 
famous  paper  itself.  The  whole  thing  made  a  great  stir  at 
the  time  and,  in  the  case  of  Delane,  brought  about,  as  his 
friends  believed,  a  sad  end  to  a  remarkable  career. 

It  is  difficult  in  these  days  to  appreciate  fully  the  great 
power  wielded,  or  at  any  rate  apparently  wielded,  by  the 
Editor  of  the  Times,  or  the  dexterous  manner  in  which  he 
followed  public  opinion  in  many  cases  when  appearing  to 
lead  it.  Thus  Delane  was  himself  strongly  opposed  to  that 
idiotic  venture  known  as  the  War  in  Abyssinia  which  other 
journals  were  strongly  advocating.  Public  opinion  gradually 
came  round  to  the  view  that  something  ought  to  be  done, 
in  order  to  rescue  a  worthless  person  named  Rassam  from 
captivity  in  that  country.  Delane  saw  the  change  ap- 
proaching, and  made  ready  to  turn  round  himself.  My  old 
friend  Louis  Jennings  was  writing  leaders  at  the  time  in  the 
great  journal  against  the  war.  One  fine  morning,  not 
having  been  to  the  Times  office  the  d.iy  before,  he  read  an 
article  in  the  directly  opposite  sense.  He  went  down  as 
usual  to  see  Delane  and  said,  as  he  told  me,  "You  won't 


184  THE  RECORD  OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

want  anything  from  me  to-day  on  Abyssinia  I  suppose?" 
"No,  not  to-day,  my  dear  boy,  not  to-day.  There  is  some- 
thing which  will  better  reward  your  attention. "  And  round 
went  the  Times  in  favour  of  one  of  the  most  useless  expedi- 
tions in  our  history.  But  the  Times  was  the  Times,  and  it 
is  astonishing  how  under  different  editors  it  has  maintained 
its  traditions  of  giving  news  and  correspondence  fairly.  I, 
for  one,  regret  the  evil  days  it  fell  upon,  partly  in  conse- 
quence of  exposing  a  fraud ;  and  many  a  City  man  has  said 
since  he  preferred  Mr.  Sampson's  brilliant  unscrupulousness 
to  the  incapable  rectitude  which  followed  him  in  his  City 
column. 

I  suppose  few  men  can  point  to  any  one  year  in  their 
lives  and  say  that  this  marked  the  commencement  for  them 
of  a  new  career.  But  that  was  undoubtedly  the  significance 
to  me  of  the  year  1880.  It  began  with  the  General  Election. 
That  turned  upon  the  Eastern  Question.  The  fervent  cham- 
pionship of  Russia  by  the  Liberal  Party  led  by  Mr.  Glad- 
stone in  his  famous  Mid-Lothian  campaign  on  the  Bulgarian 
atrocities  and  supported  not  only  by  the  Nonconformist 
Ministers  but  by  the  Anglican  Ritualist  parsons,  had  made 
this  the  one  burning  issue  of  the  electoral  struggle.  Having 
throughout,  as  mentioned  above,  opposed  this  folly,  as  I 
considered  it,  on  democratic  grounds,  I  suddenly  determined, 
in  what  I  admit  to  have  been  a  somewhat  impulsive  way, 
to  stand  for  Marylebone  as  an  independent  candidate.  It 
is  quite  probable  that  had  I  continued  in  the  field  I  should 
have  won ;  for  the  two  Liberal  candidates  were  merely  rich 
mediocrities  of  the  type  always  favoured  by  Liberal  states- 
men and  Radical  wire-pullers.  But  for  various  reasons  I 
retired,  having  drawn  upon  me  a  long  denunciation  from 
Mr.  Gladstone  in  St.  Andrew's  Hall,  Newman  Street,  who 
wound  up  by  calling  upon  his  audience  to  "drop  a  few 
tears"  upon  the  final  extinguishment  of  Mr.  Hyndman.  To 
this  diatribe  I  replied  on  the  following  day,  and  ventured 


AMERICAN  NOTES  185 

to  predict  that,  in  spite  of  the  tears  that  fell  in  St.  Andrew's 
Hall,  the  time  had  not  yet  come  for  wreaths  to  be  placed 
on  my  political  coffin. 

Writing  in  1911,  with  more  than  thirty  years  of  additional 
vigorous  political  work  behind  me,  and  an  active  Socialist 
Party  obviously  the  coming  force  in  English  public  affairs, 
I  think  I  am  entitled  to  claim  that  my  retort  upon  the  cele- 
brated rhetorician  has  been  fully  justified. 

I  confess  I  am  one  of  those  who  never  could  greatly 
admire  Mr.  Gladstone.  His  great  physical  vigour,  his 
wonderful  rhetorical  and  argumentative  gifts,  his  immense 
store  of  superficial  knowledge,  his  marvellous  faculty  of 
accommodating  himself  to  the  situation,  and  his  unequalled 
influence  over  the  House  of  Commons  were  obvious  to  all. 
But  I  failed  to  discern  that  these  qualities  were  controlled 
and  applied  by  any  very  high  political  intelligence.  He 
was  not  a  consummate  hypocrite,  but  his  adaptability  en- 
abled him,  almost  unconsciously,  to  read  himself  into  his 
own  part  for  the  moment  so  completely  that  he  frequently 
believed  that  those  who  opposed  him  were  inspired  by  per- 
sonal malignity  and  egged  on  thereto  by  the  devil.  Only 
in  this  way  can  we  reasonably  reconcile  his  ardent  advo- 
cacy of  the  emancipation  of  Italy  and  the  Balkan  States 
with  his  monstrous  conquest  of  Egypt,  his  intolerable 
tyranny  in  Ireland,  and  his  complete  indifference  to  our 
ruinous  misrule  in  India.  He  " conscientiously  believed" 
in  the  two  first  cases  that  which  it  was  to  his  immediate 
political  advantage  to  adopt. 

Nobody,  however,  who  did  not  live  through  this  period 
can  form  any  conception  of  the  personal  adoration  felt  for 
Mr.  Gladstone  by  his  supporters.  To  attack  him,  even  to 
criticise  any  of  his  measures,  speeches,  or  writings,  was 
nothing  short  of  an  outrage  upon  morality  and  religion. 
Providence  had  him  in  His  special  keeping,  and  his  orations 
and  pamphlets,  no  matter  how  contradictory,  were  all  direct 


186     THE  RECORD  OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

emanations  from  the  Most  High.  It  was  a  singular  hallu- 
cination which,  as  I  say,  Mr.  Gladstone  himself  at  times 
shared.  When  Sir  Henry  Bulwer  (Lord  Balling)  went  to 
call  upon  him  in  Harley  Street,  at  a  moment  when  the 
Eastern  Question  was  specially  exciting,  before,  that  is  to 
say,  the  Berlin  Congress  and  the  " Peace  with  Honour" 
mystification,  he  was  taken  this  way.  In  the  middle  of 
their  conversation  Mr.  Gladstone  got  up,  strode  feverishly 
up  and  down  the  room,  and  declared  at  the  top  of  his  voice 
that  he  was  a  chosen  vessel  of  the  Almighty  in  this  matter. 
Bulwer  came  away  horrified,  and  stated  privately  that 
Gladstone  was  quite  mad.  He  was,  of  course,  nothing  of 
the  kind.  He  was  only  temporarily  exalted  and  overflowing 
with  an  undue  sense  of  his  own  importance.  Of  course, 
had  he  not  been  a  man  of  splendid  physique,  as  sound  as  a 
bell  all  through,  such  nervous  crises  would  have  shaken 
his  intellect. 

This  physical  soundness  of  his  stood  him  in  good  stead 
many  a  time.  Joseph  Cowen  told  me  that  when  the  House 
had  been  turning  night  into  day  during  the  Irish  debates 
for  weeks  on  end,  Gladstone  had  on  one  occasion  gone  off 
to  Downing  Street,  as  everybody  thought  to  rest.  Not  a 
bit  of  it.  Some  important  point  arose.  Gladstone  was  sent 
for,  and  Cowen  himself,  wearied  and  worn  out  with  bad 
oratory  and  worse  air,  was  going  home,  when  he  met  the 
Prime  Minister,  at  3  o'clock  in  the  morning,  coming  jauntily 
along  Parliament  Street  at  a  great  pace,  with  his  hat  jauntily 
tilted  and  jubilantly  swinging  his  stick.  Physically  in- 
capable of  fatigue,  with  a  prodigious  memory  and  allowing 
no  political  prejudices  to  interfere  with  his  personal  opinions, 
it  is  easy  to  understand  the  effect  he  produced  upon  his 
contemporaries.  I  never  spoke  to  him,  or  was  in  the  same 
room  with  him,  but  I  was  anxious  to  know  what  he  himself 
thought  would  be  his  place  in  the  array  of  British  states- 
men, having  come  to  an  opinion  upon  this  matter  myself. 


AMERICAN  NOTES  187 

So  I  got  my  old  friend  Thomas  Woolner  the  sculptor,  who 
was  then  taking  a  bust  of  "the  Grand  Old  Man"  and  who 
knew  him  very  well,  to  lead  him  up  to  an  expression  of 
opinion  as  to  his  own  estimate  of  his  historical  position. 
"  Would  you  not  say,  sir,  that  the  world  will  consider  you 
the  last  of  our  great  commercial  statesmen?"  Gladstone, 
so  Woolner  told  me,  hesitated  for  a  minute  before  answering, 
and  then  said,  "I  think  that  might  probably  be  a  correct 
estimate."  It  is  a  little  curious,  by  the  way,  that  Glad- 
stone's head  between  the  dates  of  two  busts  Woolner  made 
of  him  had  increased  a  full  quarter  of  an  inch  in  circum- 
ference. 


CHAPTER  XIII 

VARIOUS  EXPERIENCES 

defeat  of  the  Conservative  administration  in  1880 
-L  not  only  put  an  end  to  my  hopes  of  the  success  of  my 
policy  in  regard  to  India,  but  broke  up  all  the  old  relations 
in  the  Pall  Mall  Gazette.  Mr.  George  Smith,  the  owner,  sold 
the  paper  to  his  son-in-law,  Mr.  Yates  Thompson,  on  the 
ground,  as  he  told  me,  that  he  could  not  stand  Greenwood's 
attacks  upon  Gladstone  any  longer.  As  I  had  never  been  a 
Tory  or  a  Conservative  and,  in  fact,  could  not  be,  I  did  not 
see  my  way  to  following  Greenwood  into  that  camp.  The 
new  editor  was  Mr.  John  Morley,  then  at  the  height  of  his 
reputation  as  a  publicist  and  by  his  past  record  justly 
regarded  as  the  most  important  writer  on  the  advanced 
side.  I  do  not  deny  that  I  felt  the  severance  from  Green- 
wood very  much,  as  our  relations  had  been  a  great  deal 
closer  than  that  of  mere  editor  and  contributor. 

I  suppose  I  showed  this  when  I  expressed  my  sorrow  at 
the  change.  For,  sitting  with  my  wife  at  the  opera  next 
to  Mr.  Davidson,  the  musical  critic  of  the  Times,  whom 
we  happened  to  know  very  well,  and  talking  over  the  matter 
he  said,  "You  really  mustn't  take  these  matters  to  heart. 
They  come  about  in  the  natural  course  of  things/'  which, 
indeed,  was  true  enough.  Shortly  afterwards  Mr.  Yates 
Thompson,  who  was  an  old  Trinity  man  of  considerable 
academic  distinction,  asked  me  to  dinner  in  Bryanston 
Square.  There  I  met  Mr.  John  Morley,  Mr.  John  Robinson 
of  the  Daily  News,  Mr.  Andrew  Lang,  and  Mr.  W.  T.  Stead. 
I  have  often  thought  of  that  dinner  since.  It  was  the  first 

188 


VARIOUS  EXPERIENCES  189 

time  Mr.  Stead  had  appeared  in  London,  where  he  was 
quite  unknown.  He  was  to  be  the  sub-editor  of  the  Pall 
Mall  Gazette  under  Mr.  Morley.  Mr.  Lang,  Mr.  Robinson 
and  myself,  who  all  knew  one  another  before,  walked  away 
together.  Curiously  enough,  different  as  we  were  in  many 
respects,  we  all  three  had  formed  precisely  the  same  judg- 
ment —  not  a  very  flattering  one  —  of  Mr.  Stead.  And, 
what  is  still  more  remarkable,  that  judgment  has  been  borne 
out  completely  by  events. 

However,  I  did  not  at  that  time  do  much  if  any  writing 
for  Mr.  Morley.  I  had  arranged  to  take  a  trip  to  the  United 
States,  as  the  director  of  a  company  in  which  I  was  much 
interested,  and  in  which  Mr.  John  Stanley,  then  a  close 
friend  of  mine,  held  shares.  By  this  time,  as  a  result  of 
my  studies  on  India,  my  conviction  as  to  the  hopelessness 
of  Liberalism  and  Radicalism,  my  reading  up  of  the  Chartist 
movement,  and  my  acquaintance  with  foreign  revolution- 
ists, I  had  come  very  near  to  being  an  avowed  Socialist. 
My  hatred  of  the  capitalist  system,  whose  mischievous 
effects  upon  society  I  had  now  fully  recognised  all  over 
Europe,  in  America,  and  in  England,  in  the  East  and  in  the 
West,  was  still  more  sentimental  than  historic  or  scientific. 
In  fact,  the  downfall  of  the  Chartist  organisation,  which 
had  been  a  vigorous  and  cap'able  protest  against  the  revolt- 
ing brutalities  of  the  capitalist  class  in  this  island,  and  then 
the  complete  destruction  of  the  Commune,  followed  by  the 
break-down  later  of  the  International,  had  all  led  me  to 
the  belief  that  the  horrors  of  existing  human  life  were  in- 
evitable, and  that  mankind  was  in  the  grip  of  a  slave- 
owning  class  which,  in  one  shape  or  another,  must  hold 
permanent  sway  over  the  majority  of  mankind.  Nothing 
beyond  mitigating  its  abominations  seemed  possible,  though 
the  revolutionary  instincts,  which  I  suppose  I  inherited 
from  one  of  my  revolutionary  forbears,  were  still  strong  in 
me. 


190     THE  RECORD  OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

It  so  happened  that  my  change  from  this  attitude  of 
mind  came  indirectly  from  an  unexpected  quarter.  Among 
those  whose  acquaintance  and  then  friendship  I  had  made, 
in  consequence  of  my  opposition  to  the  philo-Russianism  of 
the  Liberals  and  Radicals,  was  Butler- Johnstone,  for  many 
years  member  for  Canterbury,  and  at  one  time  the  hope  of 
the  Conservative  Party.  He  had,  indeed,  made  the  best 
first  speech  heard  in  the  House  of  Commons  since  Single- 
Speech  Hamilton's ;  due  to  the  fact,  as  he  himself  informed 
me,  that  he  had  just  written  a  long  article  on  the  subject 
for  Fraser's  Magazine,  and  had  the  proofs  in  his  pocket. 
He  also  became  very  intimate  with  Lord  Salisbury,  and  at 
one  time  admired  him  very  much.  I  doubt,  nevertheless, 
whether  he  ever  understood  that  extraordinarily  able  man, 
whose  policy  was  quite  Venetian  in  its  subtlety  and  pa- 
triotic unscrupulousness,  and  whose  sole  defect  in  my 
opinion  was  that  he  never  fully  acted  up  to  his  intentions. 
In  fact,  as  Sir  George  Kellner,  who  had  a  great  admiration 
for  his  chief,  and  who  was  at  our  house  very  frequently  in 
those  days,  while  he  was  acting  as  the  dme  damnee  of  Lord 
Salisbury  at  the  Foreign  Office,  told  me,  "Lord  Salisbury 
never  writes  one  of  his  brilliant  despatches,  which  come 
down  to  me  to  be  set  up  in  print  without  a  single  correction 
or  erasure,  but  that  he  turns  round  to  see  how  he  can  get 
out  of  it." 

In  all  human  affairs  it  is  necessary  for  vigorous  action  to 
pull  down  the  shutters  on  one  side  of  the  intellect.  To  see 
too  much  always  is  weakness. 

But  that  is  part  of  another  story  about  which,  possibly, 
I  may  say  more  later.  At  any  rate,  Butler-Johnstone  took 
sides  vehemently  against  the  supposed  philo-Russian  policy 
of  Lord  Salisbury  during  the  whole  of  the  Russo-Turkish 
War,  was  present  in  Constantinople  when  our  Secretary  of 
State  for  Foreign  Affairs  went  there  on  a  special  mission  and 
showed  himself  specially  friendly  to  Count  Ignatieff,  actually 


VARIOUS  EXPERIENCES  191 

went  so  far  as  to  intrigue  with  the  Ottoman  Porte  and  the 
Pashas  against  his  former  friend,  and  even  when  the  war 
began  lent  the  Sultan  Abdul  Hamid  £300,000  —  Butler- 
Johnstone  inherited  two  huge  fortunes  —  to  enable  that 
wily  potentate  to  stir  up  a  revolt  in  the  rear  of  the  Russian 
army ;  though,  needless  to  say,  the  Sultan  used  the  money 
for  quite  other  purposes. 

Believing  Lord  Salisbury's  policy  to  be  wholly  erroneous 
and  Lord  Beaconsfield's  to  be  entirely  right,  Butler-Johnstone 
was  delighted  to  find  any  independent  writer  who,  as  he 
thought,  shared  his  views,  and  who  really  in  great  part  did. 
So  he  asked  Greenwood  who  wrote  a  certain  article,  and, 
having  found  out,  took  a  house  with  his  dying  wife  close  to 
us.  Through  him  I  got  to  know  Dr.  Rudolph  Meyer,  who 
had  for  a  long  time  been  one  of  Bismarck's  private  secre- 
taries, and  also  that  curious  combination  of  men  having  all 
existing  treaties  at  their  fingers'  ends,  as  well  as  a  number 
of  secret  conventions  about  which  they  had  more  or  less 
accurate  information,  who  were  known  as  "The  Temple 
Club."  Their  methods  were  at  times  laughable,  and  they 
tried  to  hatch  out  more  than  one  mare's  nest;  but  they 
studied  both  facts  and  documents  most  carefully,  which  is 
a  good  deal  more  than  some  do  who  pose  as  diplomats  and 
statesmen  to-day.  As  to  Butler-Johnstone  himself,  with  all 
his  wealth,  his  knowledge  of  the  world,  his  close  acquaintance 
with  foreign  affairs,  and  his  great  natural  talents,  he  made  a 
sad  end  of  his  promising  life;  because  he  would  believe 
that  intrigue  was  more  useful  than  it  ever  can  be  in  great 
matters,  and  because  he  would  not  take  account  of  events 
or  recognise  inevitable  changes.  But  to  me  he  was  at  this 
period  a  most  genuine  and  valuable  friend,  in  spite  of  all 
his  drawbacks,  and  I  learnt  from  him  much  of  what  to  do 
and  more  of  what  to  avoid  in  order  to  achieve  any  great 
object.  I  look  back  still  with  sadness  to  the  memory  of 
our  friendship  in  those  days  when  his  wife,  the  Countess 


192  THE  RECORD   OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

Vimercati,  who  died  in  my  wife's  arms,  was  slowly  wasting 
away  with  consumption  in  our  desperate  climate. 

But  the  greatest  debt  I  owed  to  Butler-Johnstone  was  the 
gift  he  sent  me  of  the  French  edition  of  Marx's  Capital 
just  as  I  was  starting  for  the  United  States.  By  an  accident 
we  missed  the  tender  for  the  Cunarder  Algeria.  It  was 
blowing  hard,  and  we  took  a  wherry  to  catch  the  liner, 
which  was  beginning  to  up  anchor  for  sailing.  We  were 
just  in  time,  and  were  regarded  by  all  on  board  as  a  run- 
away couple,  until  an  old  lady,  who  took  my  wife  to  task 
for  running  away  from  her  family  and  friends,  was  informed 
that  we  had  been  duly  married  for  more  than  four  years. 
On  the  passage  over,  on  the  cars,  and  during  my  stay  at 
Salt  Lake  City,  which  was  my  destination,  I  read  hard  at 
Marx;  and  although  I  did  not  at  the  time  fully  grasp  all 
the  significance  of  his  theories,  which  indeed  are  rarely 
apparent  to  the  student  who  reads  him  for  the  first  time,  I 
came  to  the  conclusion  that  the  only  way  out  of  the  exist- 
ing social  difficulties  was  the  inevitable  development  from 
capitalism  to  socialism,  and  that  this  could  never  be  peace- 
fully brought  about  except  by  a  thoroughly  educated  indus- 
trial democracy. 

At  this  time  the  effects  of  the  great  industry,  with  its 
bitter  class  antagonism,  relentless  oppression  of  the  wage- 
earners,  frequent  crises  and  consequent  wholesale  unem- 
ployment, and  simultaneous  growth  of  vast  trusts  and 
combines,  were  being  felt  more  keenly  in  the  United  States 
than  ever  before.  I  had  myself  witnessed  the  devastating 
crisis  of  1874,  when  flourishing  centres  of  industry,  but 
now  in  the  full  swing  of  active  and  profitable  work,  had 
become  in  a  few  weeks  like  cities  of  the  dead,  and  whole 
districts  suffered  as  if  from  a  catastrophe  of  nature  or  a 
stringently  enforced  Pontifical  Interdict  in  the  Middle 
Ages.  In  1880  all  this  began  to  be  felt  and  taken  account 
of  in  a  serious  manner. 


VARIOUS  EXPERIENCES  193 

The  Great  Republic,  for  all  its  democratic  forms  and 
vast  unsettled  territory,  was  as  little  immune  from  these 
economic  scourges  as  the  monarchies  of  Europe  —  suffered 
from  them,  indeed,  relatively  more  —  while  wealth  was 
accumulating  in  the  hands  of  the  few  to  an  extent  quite 
unprecedented  even  in  the  most  lavish  days  of  the  Roman 
Empire.  The  United  States  was,  I  thought,  rapidly  develop- 
ing into  a  huge  unscrupulous  plutocracy.  Without,  there- 
fore, neglecting  the  business  which  had  brought  me  again 
to  Salt  Lake  City,  and  which  in  its  way  was  important 
enough,  alike  to  myself  and  to  others,  I  was  able  to  watch 
in  the  newspapers  and  magazines  while  I  was  alone  out  West, 
having  left  my  wife  in  the  Catskill  Mountains  with  the  in- 
tention of  meeting  her  at  Buffalo,  the  tremendous  economic 
and  social  evolution  that  was  going  on  throughout  America. 
At  this  period,  also,  the  agitation  on  the  sand-lots  in  San 
Francisco  was  active,  and  the  influence  of  Henry  George 
with  his  Progress  and  Poverty  was  making  itself  felt.  So 
that,  with  Marx's  analysis  of  capitalism  in  my  hand,  I  had 
a  good  opportunity  of  comparing  his  theories  with  the 
actual  facts  I  had  left  behind  me  in  Europe,  and  with  those 
which  I  could  now  see  around  me  in  America. 

Strange  to  say,  too,  I  met  out  West  a  vehement  Irish 
Nationalist  who  put  me  on  the  track  of  the  great  Home 
Rule  conspiracy,  with  its  two  branches  of  pacific  organisa- 
tion and  desperate  violence,  which  led  me  to  a  clear  con- 
ception of  what  active  support  the  growing  agitation  for 
Home  Rule  for  Ireland  would  receive  from  the  American 
Irish  of  both  schools.  It  was  thus  an  eventful  trip  for  me 
in  every  way,  and  though  I  succeeded  in  the  business  object 
with  which  I  set  out,  that  was  of  little  moment  in  com- 
parison with  what  my  last  visit  to  the  United  States  taught 
me  as  to  the  likelihood  of  trouble  —  economic,  social,  and 
political  trouble  —  in  the  coming  time. 

Being  then  on  very  good  terms  with  Mr.  John  Morley,  I 


194  THE   RECORD   OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

wrote  to  him  in  a  private  letter  something  of  what  I  saw, 
or  thought  I  saw,  which  had  a  very  amusing  sequel  - 
amusing  then  and  still  more  amusing  now.  I  wrote  that  in 
my  opinion  the  clash  of  class  interest  was  becoming  so 
vehement  that  no  long  time  could  elapse  before  it  took 
shape  in  open  conflict.  Not  even  the  enormous  potential 
wealth  of  the  Republic  still  remaining  undeveloped  could 
save  her  from  this  violent  class  struggle,  which  I  held 
would  be  both  bitter  and  continuous.  Mr.  Morley  printed 
this  anonymously  in  the  Pall  Mall  Gazette  —  it  was  after- 
wards set  out  at  greater  length  in  my  article  on  "The  Lights 
and  Shades  of  American  Politics "  in  the  Fortnightly  Review 
—  and  thus  came  back  to  the  United  States  again.  So  it 
happened  that,  just  as  I  returned  to  New  York  from  Utah, 
this  passage  appeared  in  the  New  York  Tribune,  then  edited 
by  Mr.  Whitelaw  Reid,  now  American  Ambassador  in  Lon- 
don, with  the  following  comment:  " England  sends  many 
fool-travellers  to  the  United  States,  but  never  before  such 
a  fool  as  this."  As  the  terrible  fight  at  Homestead  occurred 
a  few  months  afterwards,  when  Mr.  Andrew  Carnegie  turned 
loose  the  Pinkerton  "Thugs,"  armed  with  Winchester  rifles, 
to  shoot  down  the  workmen  out  of  whose  unpaid  labour  he 
had  piled  up  his  colossal  fortune,  and  not  long  thereafter 
the  Chicago  Riots  and  other  great  strike  disturbances 
astonished  the  world,  I  think  I  may  claim  that  the  fool- 
traveller  saw  a  little  more  clearly  what  was  going  on  than 
the  home-keeping  wiseacre  who  posed  as  the  omniscient 
editor.  I  do  admit,  nevertheless,  that,  owing  to  reasons 
which  I  can  see  very  clearly  to-day,  the  class  war  has  not 
reached  the  stage  of  revolutionary  class  crisis  so  quickly  as 
I  then  anticipated.  The  wheels  of  economics  do  grind 
slowly  though  they  grind  exceeding  small. 

On  coming  back  from  the  West,  where  I  had  a  few  excit- 
ing and  rather  exceptional  experiences,  I  met  my  wife  in 
the  delightful  city  of  Buffalo  at  the  house  of  some  friends, 


IVARIOUS  EXPERIENCES  195 

who  had  treated  her  with  a  hospitality  and  kindness  re- 
markable even  in  hospitable  America.  Crossing  over  from 
Buffalo  to  Toronto  we  went  down  the  St.  Lawrence  in  mag- 
nificent weather,  which  made  this  little  voyage  through  the 
Rapids  and  the  thousand  islands  one  of  the  finest  trips  in 
the  world,  visited  Niagara,  Montreal,  Boston,  Harvard 
University,  and  so  back  to  New  York.  There  we  met, 
thanks  to  kind  introductions,  some  of  the  ablest  Americans 
of  the  day;  and  William  Henry  Hurlbert,  one  of  the  most 
brilliant  men  I  ever  encountered,  who  came  later  to  so  sad 
a  downfall,  was  specially  hospitable.  It  was  at  a  dinner 
given  by  him  at  Sherry's  that  I  met  Messrs.  Evarts,  George 
William  Curtis,  Thorndyke  Rice,  editor  of  the  North  Ameri- 
can Magazine,  for  which  I  was  then  writing,  Captain  Gor- 
ringe,  who  brought  over  the  obelisk  to  New  York,  and 
others,  including  Archibald  Forbes  the  famous  war  cor- 
respondent, whom  I  then  saw  for  the  first  time. 

It  was  a  most  delightful  gathering  to  begin  with,  and 
ought  to  have  been  so  throughout.  But  Forbes  thought 
proper  to  make  a  remark  about  American  sailors  which  was 
a  gross  insult  to  every  American  present,  and  particularly 
to  Gorringe.  What  was  worse  he  repeated  it,  in  still  more 
offensive  shape.  I  never  admired  men  more  than  I  did 
the  Americans  at  that  table.  Their  behaviour  was  quite 
perfect.  The  other  Englishman  who  was  there,  Mr.  Dudley 
Ryder,  and  myself  did  our  utmost  to  remove  the  effect  pro- 
duced by  Forbes'  brutality,  by  pretending  that  his  words 
had  no  meaning;  but  the  man  who  saved  the  situation  for 
us  all  by  his  tact  and  firmness  was  our  host.  To  this  day  I 
don't  quite  know  how  he  did  it,  but  be  performed  the  mar- 
vellous feat  of  completely  shutting  up  Forbes,  pacifying 
Gorringe,  and  restoring  the  general  good  feeling.  I  have 
witnessed  several  unpleasant  scenes,  notably  one  at  Venice 
between  George  Augustus  Sala  and  George  Meredith,  but  I 
never  felt  quite  so  much  humiliated  and  inclined  to  crawl 


196  THE  RECORD   OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

away  under  the  table  as  I  did  on  this  occasion.  Most  of  us 
walked  up  to  a  club  together  after  dinner,  without  Forbes, 
and  one  of  the  Americans  said  in  talking  the  matter  over, 
"That  is  the  sort  of  man  we  did  not  know  you  bred  over  on 
the  other  side.  We  have  not  a  few  of  them  here  unfor- 
tunately/' which  I  thought  was  a  nice  way  of  putting  it. 
Hurlbert  was  the  first  man  to  point  out  to  me  what  he 
believed  to  be  the  inevitable  tendency  of  his  country  towards 
aggression  and  Imperialism,  a  tendency  which,  I  think,  very 
few  detected  more  than  thirty  years  ago.  He  was  of  a 
Southern  family,  but  he  had  been  educated  at  Harvard, 
knew  Europe  well,  and  was  one  of  the  few  Americans  I  ever 
met  who  spoke  French  perfectly.  Talking  to  me  about  the 
future  of  the  United  States,  long  before  Mr.  James  Blaine 
formulated  his  policy  of  combining  the  various  American 
Republics,  he  said:  "You  will  see  that  as  this  Republic 
becomes  more  wealthy  and  more  powerful  she  will  spread 
herself  out,  not  only  commercially  but  militarily.  The  old 
ideas  of  non-interference  will  rapidly  fade  away,  and  the 
necessities  for  new  markets,  combined  with  a  desire  to  make 
themselves  felt,  will  influence  both  rich  and  poor  Ameri- 
cans in  their  external  policy.  We  shall  sooner  or  later  go 
South  and  East,  and  our  vast  industrial  and  agricultural 
resources  will  be  turned  to  the  purposes  of  war.  That  will 
in  its  turn  break  down  democracy,  for  the  time  being  at  any 
rate,  and  it  would  not  in  the  least  surprise  me  if  we  were 
to  develop  into  Caesarism  in  course  of  time.  There  are  all 
the  makings  here  of  a  new  and  formidable  aggressive  power, 
while  the  obstacles  to  such  a  development  are  neither  strong 
nor  numerous.  The  very  fact  that  we  are  not  prepared  for 
war,  as  you  justly  say  we  are  not,  will  make  us  the  more 
dangerous.  A  reverse  or  two  to  start  with  would  rouse  the 
whole  nation,  and  then  our  inexhaustible  resources  would 
be  drawn  upon  to  the  last  ounce  in  order  to  win."  His 
predictions  have  been  fulfilled  to  a  much  greater  extent 


VARIOUS  EXPERIENCES  197 

already  than  I  thought  possible  at  the  time,  and  we  are 
obviously  only  at  the  beginning  of  the  movement.  Theodore 
Roosevelt  represents  the  average  American's  ideas  far  more 
accurately  than  it  is  pleasant  to  contemplate  for  the  sake  of 
the  United  States  and  the  world  at  large. 

There  are  some  men  in  life  one  always  wants  to  meet  and 
never  does.  Laurence  Oliphant  was  such  a  man  in  my 
case.  Five  times  we  were  to  have  met  at  the  same  table, 
and  five  times  we  missed.  I  never  saw  him.  To-day  he  is 
almost  forgotten,  and  yet  surely  Piccadilly  and  Altiora  Peto, 
his  letters  and  his  conversation,  possessed  qualities  which 
ought  to  have  preserved  them.  His  eccentricities  were  as 
remarkable  as  his  talents,  and  his  versatility  was  excep- 
tional —  altogether  a  singular  admixture  of  litterateur ,  man 
of  the  world,  man  of  business,  man  of  pleasure  and  mystic. 
At  this  date  he  was  performing  in  the  role  of  man  of  busi- 
ness, and  had  come  over  to  New  York  on  the  important 
matter  of  a  French  Transatlantic  Cable  in  company  with  a 
little  Jew  named  Aarons,  the  agent  of  the  French  house  of 
Lazard  Freres.  All  was  going  on  extremely  well  in  New 
York,  and  the  Lazards  of  San  Francisco  were  expecting  a 
visit  from  —  singular  combination  !  —  Oliphant  and  Aarons 
to  complete  important  subscriptions  on  the  Pacific  Slope, 
when  one  morning  little  Aarons  came,  in  great  haste  and  in 
obvious  trepidation,  to  call  upon  Hurlbert.  "What  is  the 
matter?"  asked  Hurlbert.  "Ah,  monsieur,"  said  Aarons, 
"que  faire?  Ce  monsieur  Oliphant,  il  est  vraiment  unpay- 
able. II  est  parti  sans  mot.  Voila  sa  lettre.  Qu'est-ce 
que  c.a  signifie?"  Hurlbert  took  it  and  read  it.  It  was  in 
French  and  ran  thus:  "Dear  Mr.  Aarons,  I  feel  that  my 
moral  nature  will  no  longer  support  the  atmosphere  of  in- 
tolerable iniquity  and  turpitude  which  pervades  New  York. 
My  entire  soul  is  degraded  by  contact  with  such  vileness, 
and  to  remain  here  would  finally  corrupt  what  little  of  good 
still  remains  within  me.  I  am  going  to  the  remote  West 


198  THE   RECORD   OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

for  at  least  six  months.  There,  in  commune  with  the  great 
solitudes,  and  by  the  help  of  a  noble  friend,  I  hope  to  be 
able  to  disburden  my  mind  and  conscience  of  the  foulness 
and  sin  with  which  it  is  now  besmirched.  You  will  there- 
fore see  me  no  more  for  six  months."  "That  means," 
quoth  Hurlbert,  "exactly  what  it  says;  you  will  not  see  my 
friend  Monsieur  Laurence  Oliphant  for  at  least  six  months. 
He  has  gone  off  to  the  prophet  Harris  for  six  months." 
"Quoi,  le  prophete  Arrice!"  stammered  the  little  Jew, 
whose  face  had  turned  green,  "tout  est  done  tombe*  dans 
Peau."  Oliphant  duly  remained  away  in  the  West  for  his 
six  months  and  cleansed  his  soul  of  New  York's  abomina- 
tions, but  in  the  meanwhile  the  financiers  contrived  to  patch 
up  the  business  without  him,  and  poor  M.  Aarons  recovered 
his  equanimity  as  he  pocketed  his  cash. 

On  the  last  night  before  we  left  New  York  on  our  return 
trip  by  the  Servia,  Hurlbert  and  Gorriuge  and  Thorndyke 
Rice  dined  with  my  wife  and  myself  at  Delmonico's,  and  the 
former  told  us  the  following  anecdote  of  Napoleon  III., 
which  he  himself  had  heard  from  Dr.  Corvisart  and  which 
I  have  never  seen  in  print.  The  Emperor  had  just  finished 
his  Life  of  Ccesar,  and  the  manuscript  was  ready  to  go  to 
the  printers,  when  he  bethought  him  he  should  like  to  take 
an  independent  opinion  upon  it.  So  he  sent  for  Dr.  Cor- 
visart and  asked  him  what  Frenchman  was  best  qualified 
to  criticise  his  great  work.  "Well,"  said  Corvisart,  "there 
is  no  doubt  about  who  is  the  very  best  man  to  advise  your 
Majesty,  but  I  can  scarcely  venture  to  mention  him  to  you 
here."  "Why  not?"  asked  Napoleon;  "what  is  his 
name?"  "His  name  is  Duruy,  M.  Victor  Duruy."  "Oh 
ho !"  said  Napoleon,  "the  man  who  has  just  been  turned 
out  of  the  Sorbonne  for  his  revolutionary  views?"  "That 
is  he,  your  Majesty."  "What  does  that  matter?  Why 
shouldn't  he  give  me  his  judgment  on  a  purely  literary  sub- 
ject?" "lamalittle  afraid, Sire, he  might  be  disrespectful." 


VARIOUS   EXPERIENCES  199 

"Nonsense,"  replied  Napoleon;  "you  kindly  go  to  M. 
Duruy,  Corvisart,  present  to  him  the  compliments  of  Louis 
Buonaparte,  and  tell  him  that  as  I  cannot,  under  the  cir- 
cumstances, give  myself  the  pleasure  of  calling  upon  him, 
I  shall  feel  it  an  honour  if  he  will  come  and  call  upon  me, 
privately,  here  in  the  Tuileries,  and  give  me  the  advantage 
of  his  profound  learning  in  Roman  history  as  one  man  of 
letters  to  another." 

Off  went  Dr.  Corvisart  on  his  mission,  saw  ex-Professor 
Duruy,  and  induced  him  to  go  to  the  Tuileries.  Napoleon 
greeted  him  cordially  and  had  the  MS.  all  ready  to  submit 
to  him,  as  Duruy  had  undertaken,  after  a  few  complimentary 
words,  to  look  it  through.  "  Before  I  hand  you  the  parcel 
to  take  back  with  you,  however,  M.  Duruy,  it  would  give 
me  great  pleasure  to  hear  your  own  views  upon  the  Roman 
Empire  as  a  whole,  if  you  will  kindly  give  them  to  me." 
Nothing  loth,  Duruy  laid  himself  out  to  criticise  the  history 
of  that  great  Imperial  organisation,  not  forgetting  to  slip 
in  a  number  of  side  sarcasms  at  the  expense  of  the  Empire 
under  which  he  himself  was  then  living.  The  criticisms 
naturally  became  more  caustic  and  the  satire  more  severe 
as  the  defects  and  weaknesses  of  the  decaying  Empire  of 
Rome  became  more  apparent,  and,  at  the  close  of  his  bril- 
liant survey  of  the  most  famous  despotism  of  antiquity, 
M.  Duruy  was  evidently  much  pleased  with  the  opportunity 
that  had  been  given  him  and  the  manner  in  which  he  had 
taken  advantage  of  it. 

"And  how  long,  M.  Duruy,  do  you  consider  that  this 
Empire,  whose  inherent  weakness  you  have  so  scathingly 
exposed,  how  long  do  you  reckon  that  this  colossus  with  the 
feet  of  clay  maintained  itself  upright  and  fairly  vigorous?" 
asked  Napoleon.  "I  suppose,"  replied  Duruy,  "you  would 
reckon  the  actual  period  of  Roman  Imperial  supremacy  from 
the  proclamation  of  Augustus  as  Emperor  in  Rome  to  the 
removal  of  the  seat  of  Empire  from  Rome  to  Constantinople 


200  THE  RECORD   OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

by  Constantine  the  Great?"  "Yes,"  said  Napoleon,  "that 

would  be  a  fair  view  of  its  duration  and  that  would  be ?" 

"About  400  years/7  put  in  Duruy.  "Eh  bien,  savez-vous, 
M.  Duruy/7  retorted  Napoleon,  "que  dans  les  affaires 
humaines  vous  avez  la  ce  qu'on  appelle  un  grand  succes?" 

William  Henry  Hurlbert,  whom  I  saw  so  much  of  in 
America  from  time  to  time,  and  with  whom  we  became 
intimate  in  England,  was  unquestionably  one  of  the  most 
interesting,  well-informed,  and  brilliant  Americans  it  has 
ever  been  my  good  fortune  to  meet.  He  had  also  nothing 
of  what  we  are  accustomed  to  entitle  the  American  accent 
—  no  nasal  intonation  and  no  special  prominence  given  to 
small  and  unimportant  words.  Though  he  was  editor  of 
the  World,  his  faculties  as  a  journalist  and  man  of  letters 
were  not  those  which  to  the  world  at  large  seemed  most 
important.  Yet  I  myself  saw  him  perform  a  literary  tour 
de  force  which  I  consider  one  of  the  most  remarkable  I  ever 
remember.  An  ode  of  Victor  Hugo's  had  just  appeared  in 
France  and  arrived  in  New  York  by  the  mail  on  Saturday 
morning.  It  was  a  long  ode  with  many  variations  of  rhythm 
and  metre.  Hurlbert  took  it  and  translated  it  into  excel- 
lent English  verse,  which  followed  for  most  part  the  changes 
of  the  French,  in  time  for  it  to  appear  in  the  World  Sunday 
edition.  I  congratulated  him  warmly  on  this  extraordinary 
performance,  but  he  did  not  appear  to  think  very  much  of 
it  himself.  There  was  one  trait  of  Hurlbert's  which  always 
surprised  me.  Although  a  Southerner  and  a  Democrat  and 
a  man  whom  the  Republicans  specially  detested  for  having 
been  a  "  Mugwump  "  during  the  Civil  War,  he  contrived  to  keep 
on  excellent  terms  with  the  Republican  leaders,  though  they 
declared  he  was  a  very  unscrupulous  man.  It  was,  indeed, 
through  Hurlbert  I  got  to  know  several  of  them,  as  well  as 
General  Hancock  and  other  foremost  men  of  the  Democrats. 

I  have  seen  two  American  Presidential  Elections  and  I 
still  live,  and  the  drums  of  both  my  ears,  so  far  as  I  know, 


VARIOUS  EXPERIENCES  201 

are  quite  sound.  What  is  it  makes  the  Americans,  who 
come  in  the  main  of  the  cool  phlegmatic  stock  of  northern 
Europe,  so  tremendously  excitable  at  election  times?  An 
ordinary  set  election  address  delivered  by  one  of  the  leading 
party  orators  they  will  listen  to  with  attention  and  in 
reasonable  quietude.  Interruptions  at  such  functions  are 
not  allowed  to  nearly  the  same  extent  that  they  are  in  this 
country,  as  I  particularly  noticed  when  I  heard  a  very  able 
and  telling  address  by  Mr.  Evarts  quite  undisturbed  at  the 
Cooper  Institute  in  New  York.  But  when  it  gets  near  to 
election  time  and  delegates  meet  to  choose  other  delegates 
or  nominate  candidates  and  so  on  —  well,  Babel  was  a 
Quaker's  meeting  to  what  goes  on. 

It  was  at  such  a  meeting  at  Indianapolis,  a  respectable 
well-to-do  city  in  Indiana,  where  I  saw  and  heard  electoral 
enthusiasm  in  full  blast  for  the  first  time.  Blast  it  was 
indeed.  Upon  entering  and  being  given  a  good  seat,  as  a 
stranger,  I  looked  round  the  platform  and  the  audience  and 
to  all  appearance  a  more  level-headed  self-controlled  set  of 
people  I  never  beheld.  There  was  my  mistake.  In  busi- 
ness they  were,  I  doubt  not,  level-headed,  in  social  matters, 
I  am  quite  sure,  self-controlled.  But  in  politics,  Oh  my ! 
You  bet !  It  all  came  like  a  flash.  I  never  witnessed  any- 
thing so  sudden  in  my  life.  Some  campaign  reference  by  a 
favourite  speaker,  which  I  did  not  in  the  least  understand, 
started  the  outbreak,  and  within  sixty  seconds  the  whole  of 
that  big  audience  went  stark,  staring  mad.  They  cheered, 
they  howled,  they  waved  hats  and  handkerchiefs;  they 
danced,  they  jumped  on  the  chairs,  they  invaded  the  tables. 
Old  gentlemen,  white-haired  and  of  venerable  appearance, 
shouted  till  perspiration  streamed  down  their  faces  and  they- 
were  as  hoarse  as  crows.  And  so  it  went  on,  enthusiasm 
deepening  into  positive  hysteria,  until  this  amazing  effer- 
vescence gradually  wore  itself  out,  and  quiet  was  restored 
in  consequence  of  sheer  exhaustion. 


202  THE   RECORD   OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

This  was  my  first  experience  of  a  genuine  whole-souled 
party  meeting  at  the  time  of  a  Presidential  Election.  I  was 
present  at  several  similar  scenes  afterwards,  having  been  in 
America,  as  I  say,  at  the  time  of  two  such  elections.  But 
they  always  came  upon  me  with  a  sense  of  novelty.  I 
could  not  detect  sufficient  reason,  though  I  followed  Ameri- 
can politics  at  the  time  pretty  closely,  for  this  furious  and 
unrestrained  excitement.  Frenchmen  and  Italians  are 
credited  with  far  greater  tendency  to  explosive  electoral 
passion  than  Americans.  But  they  are  not  in  the  same 
field  with  citizens  of  the  Great  Republic  out  on  the  political 
warpath.  There  must  be  some  electrical  influence  in  the 
atmosphere  to  account  for  this  remarkable  tendency  to  the 
unrestrained  display  of  emotion  and  passion.  I  asked 
Hurlbert  what  it  meant?  He  had  become  so  accustomed 
to  it  all  that,  in  spite  of  his  wide  European  experience,  he 
seemed  surprised  that  I  should  regard  such  behaviour  as 
exceptional.  When  he  thought  it  over,  however,  he  agreed 
with  me  that  the  causes  of  these  strange  ebullitions  of  feel- 
ing are  probably  climatic. 

Hurlbert's  end  was  almost  as  sad  as  Oscar  Wilde's. 
Call  no  man  happy  till  his  death.  With  all  his  brilliancy, 
his  cynical  view  of  his  fellow-humans,  and  his  profound 
knowledge  of  the  world,  he  allowed  himself,  when  already 
almost  an  old  man,  having  married  a  most  agreeable  Catho- 
lic wife,  to  be  dragged  into  a  wretched  intrigue  which  led 
to  an  ugly  case,  and  the  story  of  " Wilfred  Murray"  drove 
him  into  retirement  until  his  death.  We  speak  of  people  as 
we  find  them,  and  having  always  been  on  friendly  terms 
with  W.  H.  Hurlbert  I  greatly  regretted  his  misfortunes, 
however  much  they  may  have  been  his  own  fault. 

After  a  very  pleasant  day  spent  with  a  charming  family 
at  Harrison  and  visits  to  other  friends,  including  Mr.  "Sam" 
Tilden  of  the  barr'l,  who  undoubtedly  was  cheated  out  of 
the  Presidency  when  Mr.  Hayes  was  elected,  we  dined  on 


VARIOUS  EXPERIENCES  203 

our  last  evening  in  New  York  with  Mrs.  St.  Jullien  to  meet 
a  number  of  well-known  people.  I  never  felt  so  sorry  for 
any  hostess  in  my  life,  and  I  don't  suppose  such  a  thing 
ever  befell  in  a  wealthy  household  in  a  metropolitan  city 
before  or  since.  We  had  to  wait  nearly  two  hours  for 
dinner  after  our  arrival.  The  efforts  of  all  present  to  make 
the  best  of  the  situation  were  alike  splendid  to  witness  and 
honourable  to  take  part  in,  and  when  at  last  we  did  sit 
down  to  table  we  made  up  for  lost  time  in  every  direction. 
It  was  a  most  joyful  party,  and  it  broke  up  late.  We  learnt 
afterwards  that  a  tremendous  accident  had  occurred,  and 
that  the  entire  dinner  had  had  to  be  cooked  over  again. 

We  returned  by  the  Servia  to  London  in  the  late  autumn, 
found  our  house,  left  suddenly  in  charge  of  young  servants, 
in  perfect  order,  and  political  affairs,  left  deliberately  in 
charge  of  elderly  statesmen,  turned  upside  down.  The 
latter  had  become  quite  interesting.  The  Liberals  had 
introduced  a  Compensation  for  Disturbance  Bill  for  Ireland ; 
an  excellent  measure  as  far  as  it  went.  The  House  of  Lords 
on  that  account,  of  course,  threw  it  out.  Hence  serious 
trouble  in  Ireland,  and  the  usual  " great"  Liberal  agitation 
against  the  veto  of  the  Peers.  Mr.  Gladstone  was  "in 
earnest"  this  time,  the  House  of  Obstruction  would  have 
to  give  way,  it  must  be  "mended  or  ended,"  such  an  anach- 
ronism must  be  swept  aside,  the  whole  course  of  progress 
was  blocked  by  these  coroneted  impossibilists !  And  so 
on.  To  all  this  the  Tories  replied  that  the  constitution  was 
in  danger  and  that  the  rights  of  property  were  being  de- 
stroyed. Quite  the  nice  old  sham  fight,  in  fact,  in  1880 
that  we  have  seen  in  1909-11. 

But  to  these  historic  political  sham-fighters  enter  men, 
and  women  too,  of  a  very  different  kidney,  some  of  whose 
friends  and  supporters  I  had  met  on  the  other  side  of  the 
Atlantic.  The  Land  League  appeared  shortly  on  the  scene 
as  the  more  moderate  section  of  the  revolt  in  Ireland; 


204  THE  RECORD   OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

dynamiters  then  rushed  to  the  front  as  the  irreconcilable 
element.  Immediately  I  got  back  I  went  to  Morley,  and 
told  him  what  I  thought  was  approaching  from  the  Ameri- 
can Irish.  Morley,  in  his  fine,  superior,  practical  manner, 
pooh-poohed  the  whole  thing.  There  would  be  trouble  in 
Ireland,  no  doubt,  if  the  Lords  did  not  give  way,  but  as  to 
any  serious  organised  violence  from  the  United  States,  that 
was  absurd.  At  any  rate,  the  upshot  of  the  talk  between 
us  was  that  I  should  write  for  him  in  the  Pall  Mall  Gazette 
and,  later,  when  Coercion  came  on  the  ground,  that  on  no 
account  should  there  be  any  surrender  on  that  issue. 

I  may  as  well  mention  here  that  this  last  portion  of  the 
bargain  Morley  broke  in  a  very  strange  way,  and  that  his 
conduct  in  regard  to  this,  his  behaviour  afterwards  as  Chief 
Secretary  for  Ireland  and  his  championship  of  the  crushing 
of  Arabi  Pasha,  as  exposed  by  literal  citations  from  his 
articles  of  the  time  by  Mr.  Wilfred  Scawen  Blunt,  have 
proved  that  his  policy  in  India  has  been  only  the  natural 
outcome  of  his  previous  tendencies;  for  which  reason  in 
particular  I  recall  these  strange  "Radical"  proceedings. 

It  was  to  advocate  real  Radicalism  in  its  better  sense 
that  at  this  period  a  little  journal  called  the  Radical  was 
started  by  three  able  Scotsmen,  only  one  of  whom  is  now 
living,  and  supported  by  others  who  afterwards  did  good 
service  in  different  directions.  It  is  not  too  much  to  say 
that  though  not  Socialists,  and  indeed  opposed  to  Socialism, 
Messrs.  Samuel  Bennett,  William  Webster  and  Morrison 
Davidson,  with  them  W.  M.  Thompson,  did  their  full  share 
by  their  work  on  the  Radical  to  rouse  a  sense  of  independence 
among  the  workers,  when  the  great  majority  of  the  Liberal 
Party  were  grovelling  before  Mr.  Gladstone  and  his  pet 
Whig  Coercionists. 

Towards  the  close  of  1880  and  the  beginning  of  1881, 
there  was  a  growing  feeling  that  an  effort  should  be  made 
to  rally  together  into  a  party  the  really  advanced  men  and 


VARIOUS  EXPERIENCES  205 

women  who  were  in  revolt  against  the  obvious  betrayal  of 
all  democratic  principles  at  home  and  abroad  by  Mr.  Glad- 
stone's Government.  The  question  was  upon  what  basis 
such  a  party  should  be  constituted.  At  this  time  there  was 
no  effective  Socialism  whatever  in  Great  Britain.  Without 
belittling  in  any  way  the  work  of  the  handful  of  Socialists 
at  the  old  Communist  Club,  who  raised  a  splendid  cry  of 
protest  against  the  atrocities  committed  by  the  Versailles 
troops  on  the  people  of  Paris  when  the  Commune  was 
crushed  in  1871,  or  the  propaganda  of  the  Labour  Emanci- 
pation League,  it  is  safe  to  say  that  in  the  autumn  of  1880 
the  principles  of  what  is  to-day  the  greatest  and,  indeed, 
the  only  growing  international  party  in  the  world  had  made 
no  serious  impression  whatever  on  this  side  of  the  Channel. 

Public  opinion  was  not  only  indifferent,  it  was  bitterly 
hostile  in  every  way.  The  gross  misrepresentations  of  the 
objects  of  the  Commune  of  Paris  and  of  the  men  who  had 
taken  part  in  that  desperate  attempt  to  realise  ideals  of 
emancipation  and  administration  for  which  the  time  was 
not  ripe,  and  to  which  the  position  of  Paris  itself  at  the  end 
of  the  siege  was  hopelessly  unfavourable,  had  so  affected 
the  minds  of  the  English  people  that  every  Socialist  was 
regarded  as  a  bomb-thrower  and  an  incendiary,  and  Social- 
ism itself  was  constantly  referred  to  as  an  Anarchist  revolt 
against  civilisation,  social  organisation  and  humanity  at 
large.  Moreover,  there  was  then  no  literature  to  refer  to, 
no  books  in  English  which  could  be  obtained  and  read, 
either  by  the  educated  class  or  by  the  workers.  At  most, 
a  few  ill-printed  copies  of  the  famous  Communist  Manifesto 
of  1847  by  Marx  and  Engels  done  into  English  could  be 
found  by  searching  for  them  in  the  most  advanced  revolu- 
tionary circles. 

It  is  not  too  much  to  say,  indeed,  that  the  whole  move- 
ment was  dead  so  far  as  Great  Britain  was  concerned. 
The  Socialist  conceptions  of  the  old  Chartists,  which  Marx 


206  THE  RECORD   OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

systematised,  coordinated  and  put  on  a  scientific  basis,  had 
quite  died  down  and  nothing  had  arisen  to  take  their  place : 
the  very  names  of  their  leaders  were  forgotten.  Even  the 
few  convinced  Socialists  then  in  England  did  not  all  know 
one  another.  Not  until  the  new  movement  was  in  full 
swing  was  I  myself  aware,  for  example,  that  Adolphe  Smith 
was  a  thoroughgoing  Socialist,  and  had  been  a  supporter  of  the 
Commune  of  Paris ;  that  Belfort  Bax  —  then  as  now  the  only 
original  philosophic  thinker  in  Great  Britain  —  was  as  com- 
plete an  advocate  of  scientific  Socialism  as  he  is  to-day ;  that 
Carruthers  was  an  out-and-out  Communist  and  had  written 
a  book  in  support  of  his  views ;  or  that  Stewart  Headlam 
and  his  friends  in  their  Christian  Socialism  had  advanced 
far  beyond  the  Christian  Anarchism  commonty  preached. 

It  would  have  been  quite  useless,  therefore,  even  to 
attempt  to  create  at  once  an  avowed  Socialist  Party.  That 
was  speedily  apparent,  and  the  steps  which  I  took  early  in 
1881  followed,  I  still  think,  the  best  course  that  could  have 
been  chosen. 

On  January  1,  1881,  my  article  entitled  "The  Dawn  of  a 
Revolutionary  Epoch"  appeared  as  the  leading  paper  in  the 
Nineteenth  Century  and  created  a  little  stir.  This  was  the 
public  beginning  of  my  attempt  to  establish  a  really  inde- 
pendent democratic  party  of  the  people,  apart  from  and 
opposed  to  the  two  capitalist  factions,  which  had  held  sway 
in  this  country  for  so  many  generations.  The  article  was 
not,  certainly,  such  an  one  as  I  should  write  now.  It  con- 
tains many  errors  and  displays  a  disinclination  to  speak  out 
plainly  in  favour  of  Socialism  which  surprises  me  as  I  now 
read  it.  Evidently,  although  theoretically  a  convinced 
Socialist,  the  underlying  prejudice  against  the  ideals  of 
Socialism  existing  in  my  own  mind  still  had  its  effect  and 
prevented  me  from  giving  in  the  Nineteenth  Century  a  proper 
survey  of  the  situation.  In  fact,  I,  unnecessarily  as  it  seems 
to  me  now,  accepted  the  limitations  imposed  by  my  sur- 


VARIOUS  EXPERIENCES  207 

roundings.  The  following  passage,  however,  shows  that,  in 
spite  of  a  timidity  which  was  regrettable,  I  recorded  a 
little  of  what  I  saw: 

"At  a  period  such  as  ours  anything  may  happen.  One 
of  the  features  of  the  time  is  the  prevailing  incredulity 
among  the  educated  of  all  civilised  communities.  Religious 
sanctions  are  shaken  in  every  country,  political  institutions 
are  themselves  in  a  state  of  fusion  —  for  who  shall  say 
Parliamentary  government  has  proved  fully  successful  ?  — 
the  growing  knowledge  and  power  of  the  masses  leads  them 
to  consider  more  and  more  seriously  the  strange  inequalities 
of  our  existing  arrangements,  the  spread  of  ideas  from  one 
centre  to  another  is  so  rapid  as  almost  to  defy  calculation. 
Can  it  be  said  then  that  we  are  safe  for  any  length  of  time 
from  the  shock  of  one  of  those  convulsions  which  may 
change  the  whole  social  prospect?  Those  who  condemn 
democracy,  who  look  askance  at  the  determination  to  give 
political  power  to  every  class  in  order  that  all  may  be  able 
to  insist  upon  their  share  in  the  general  advancement,  are 
but  rendering  more  probable  the  overturn  they  dread.  The 
old  days  of  aristocracy  and  class  privileges  are  passing 
away  fast;  we  have  to  consider  now  how  to  deal  with  the 
growing  democratic  influence,  so  that  we  may  benefit  by 
the  experience  of  others.  This  can  only  be  done  by  a 
steady  determination  at  the  outset  to  satisfy  the  needs  and 
gratify  the  reasonable  ambition  of  all."  This,  as  is  now 
only  too  obvious,  was  much  too  sanguine  a  view  of  the 
situation.  Talking  it  all  over  with  the  editor,  Sir  James 
Knowles,  he  reproached  me  a  little  for  my  optimism  as  to 
the  future.  "Ah,"  he  said,  "you  cherish  these  sanguine 
anticipations  and  you  may  be  right  to  do  so ;  but,  mark  my 
words,  there  will  be  a  tremendous  rushing  back  of  the 
pebbles  on  the  ebb  of  this  temporary  inflow  before  the 
next  flood-tide  of  democracy  and  progress  sweeps  in."  So 
it  has  proved. 


CHAPTER  XIV 

DISRAELI 

IF  it  is  difficult  for  those  who  did  not  live  through  the 
seventies  and  eighties  of  the  last  century  to  understand 
the  extraordinary  personal  regard  amounting  to  unreasoning 
hero-worship  which  the  Liberals  felt  for  Mr.  Gladstone,  who 
could  do  nothing  wrong  and  was  held  to  be  a  sanctified 
leader  immune  from  criticism;  still  more  difficult  is  it  for 
the  young  men  of  to-day  to  comprehend  the  position  which 
Mr.  Disraeli  attained  to  at  the  end  of  his  life  of  stress  and 
strain.  No  man  was  more  hated  by  his  political  opponents, 
or  more  distrusted  by  his  political  friends,  than  this  strange 
Jew  adventurer,  who  made  his  way  to  the  very  highest 
positions  in  the  State,  at  a  time  when  Jews  were  by  no 
means  so  readily  received  as  they  are  to-day,  and  in  spite 
of  the  fact  that  he  was  a  satirical  novelist  with  no  money 
save  that  which  he  obtained  from  his  wife.  My  friend 
Butler  Johnstone  used  to  say  that  Disraeli  owed  his  success, 
aside  from  the  great  abilities  he  possessed,  and  the  per- 
sistence of  his  race  in  following  up  the  line  of  his  ambitions, 
to  the  fact  that  he  was  in  reality  a  foreigner,  who  regarded 
all  the  problems  of  English  society  from  the  outside,  with  a 
detachment  and  coolness  impossible  for  a  native. 

Thus,  said  my  friend,  when  Disraeli  looked  round  the 
House  of  Commons,  after  he  had  definitely  taken  the  Con- 
servative side,  he  saw  himself  surrounded  by  men  who  did 
not  understand  him,  who  were  bitterly  prejudiced  against 
him,  who  cordially  disliked  him  indeed  as  much  for  his 
good  as  for  his  bad  qualities.  "That  damned  Jew"  had, 

208 


DISRAELI  209 

therefore,  a  hard  row  to  hoe  on  his  way  to  the  leadership, 
and  he  needed  a  set  of  people  who,  like  himself,  were  di- 
vorced from  English  politics  proper,  in  order  to  form  a  sort 
of  praetorian  guard  for  him,  and  protect  him  from  the  in- 
trigues of  the  Cecils  and  the  cabals  of  the  Carlton  Club. 

Hence,  though  probably  in  favour  of  Home  Rule  for 
Ireland  from  the  first,  he  gathered  round  him  a  set  of  Irish- 
men who  were  deadly  opposed  to  any  such  measure,  who 
were  always  on  the  lookout  to  better  themselves  by  political 
service,  and  who  were  consequently  ready  to  back  any  man 
who  was  prepared  and  able  to  give  them  office  in  return  for 
their  steady  support.  The  North  of  Ireland  combination, 
the  Hills  and  Hamiltons,  the  Taylors,  the  Beresfords,  and 
so  on,  attached  themselves  to  Disraeli,  therefore,  and  Dis- 
raeli attached  himself  to  them:  they  being  well  rewarded 
for  their  unfailing  personal  loyalty  by  obtaining  places 
and  dignities,  through  his  influence,  which  they  could  never 
by  any  possibility  have  got  in  any  other  way.  That,  of 
course,  is  the  tale  of  a  malicious  admirer,  who  at  least  had 
a  good  opportunity  of  seeing  what  was  going  on.  As  to 
Disraeli's  foreign  appearance  my  old  friend  used  to  say 
that  when  the  sun  shone  full  on  the  Conservative  benches 
one  afternoon,  while  all  the  rest  looked  white  Disraeli  ap- 
peared black.  The  sort  of  talk  that  was  current  about  this 
famous  litterateur  and  politician  in  Radical  circles  made  him 
out  to  be  black  indeed. 

I  remember  dining  at  the  Windham  Club  with  Mr.  W.  C. 
Borlase,  who  then  held  some  minor  post  in  the  Liberal 
administration,  Sir  William  Marriott  and  Professor  Thorold 
Rogers.  We  were  a  very  jolly  party,  indeed,  and  sat  up 
late.  Rogers  at  the  time  was  specially  bitter  against  the 
Tory  Leader,  and  would  concede  to  him  no  good  quality 
whatever.  Rogers  himself  had  taken  a  very  active  part  in 
the  General  Election  which  had  just  finished,  and  prided 
himself  upon  having  helped  to  save  several  seats  for  his 


210     THE  RECORD  OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

party.  He  did  this,  so  he  averred,  to  a  large  extent  by  a 
very  clever  comparison  of  the  great  Tory  leader  to  a  well- 
known  character  in  a  famous  drama.  We  three  sat  and 
listened  as  Thorold  Rogers  told  of  his  oratorical  masterpiece 
with  great  gusto :  — 

"You  remember,  ladies  and  gentlemen,  the  scenes  which 
I  am  about  briefly  to  describe.  They  must  have  imprinted 
themselves  indelibly  on  your  memory.  Here  is  an  old  man 
of  science  and  culture  tottering  on  the  verge  of  the  grave, 
his  frame  enfeebled,  his  vigour  failing,  even  his  mind  not 
so  bright  as  it  was.  He  waits,  not  patiently  but  resentfully, 
for  the  inevitable  end,  which  shall  for  ever  obliterate  his 
cherished  individuality  and  waft  him  off  into  the  domain  of 
nothingness  and  the  unknown.  As  he  sits,  brooding  over 
the  past  and  repining  at  the  present,  suddenly  a  man  ap- 
pears at  his  side  in  answer  to  the  worn-out  veteran's  appeal 
for  a  renewed  life  and  re-invigorated  intelligence  and  says 
to  him:  —  'I  will  restore  to  you  your  vigour,  I  will  give 
you  back  your  vitality,  I  will  resuscitate  your  intelligence, 
I  will  fire  afresh  your  jaded  passions,  I  will  grant  you  again 
all  the  brightness  of  youth,  all  the  freshness  of  early  man- 
hood, all  the  joys  of  vigorous  maturity,  and  for  my  reward 
I  ask  but  this  small  thing:  that  when  you  are  thus  born 
again  I  shall  have  the  privilege  of  accompanying  you  con- 
stantly through  your  days  of  revived  felicity/ 

"The  old  man  accepts  the  offer.  He  drinks  off  the  potion. 
Then  we  see  him  again.  All  that  has  been  promised  him  has 
been  fulfilled.  All  the  pleasures  of  activity,  all  the  delights 
of  existence,  flood  in  upon  him  once  more.  But  wherever 
he  goes,  whatever  be  the  charm  of  his  surroundings,  the 
delights  of  impassioned  love,  or  the  brilliancy  of  his  compan- 
ions, ever  that  fatal  comrade  keeps  relentlessly  by  his  side. 

"You  have  recognised  the  familiar  legend,  ladies  and 
gentlemen,  and  Faust  and  his  sinister  companion  have  risen 
before  you  as  I  spoke.  Now  consider.  In  1847,  after  the 


DISRAELI  211 

death  of  Lord  George  Bentinck,  the  Conservative  Party  was 
destitute  alike  of  the  energy  of  youth  and  of  the  wisdom 
of  age,  worn-out,  decrepit,  useless.  Ideals  faded,  policies 
destroyed,  hopes  of  office  and  power  finally  evaporated.  So 
it  seemed.  A  new  era  was  dawning  which  this  weary ful 
old  figure  could  never  even  dimly  see.  Just  at  that  moment 
a  man  comes  to  the  party  in  its  last  agony  and  says:  'I 
will  restore  to  you  your  health,  revivify  your  powers,  re- 
fresh your  intelligence,  obtain  for  you  victory,  office,  domi- 
nation. I  ask  but  one  reward  for  these  inestimable  services : 
that  I  who  do  all  this  for  you  shall  be  ever  by  your  side.7 

"The  proposal  was  accepted,  the  miracle  was  worked, 
the  new  period  was  begun.  Victory,  office,  political  domi- 
nation came  again.  But  ever,  ladies  and  gentlemen,  during 
all  the  wild  exultation  of  success,  amid  all  the  intoxication 
of  triumph,  that  fatal  man  has  stood  gazing  with  cynical 
derision  at  the  dancing  of  the  resuscitated  skeleton  to  which 
he  had  granted  a  new  lease  of  life.  And  there  he  stands 
to-day,  watching,  with  the  same  sardonic  smile  as  before, 
the  struggles  against  fate  of  the  party  into  which  he  alone 
has  breathed  vitality  and  hope." 

The  thing  was  very  well  done;  and,  to  say  the  truth, 
none  of  us  round  the  table  had  before  credited  Rogers  with 
so  much  political  verve  or  such  trenchant  though  perhaps 
too  elaborate  satire.  But  that  Disraeli  was  a  sort  of  Hebraic 
Mephistopheles  was  a  common  opinion  in  those  days,  and 
Mr.  Hill's  virulent  articles  in  the  Fortnightly  Review,  while 
keeping  pretty  close  to  the  truth,  served  to  confirm  the 
general  impression ;  as  did  also  the  sphinx-like  appearance 
of  the  man  in  his  age,  and  the  terrible  epigrams  which  he 
gave  vent  to,  or  which  were  fathered  upon  him  —  on  ne 
prete  qu'aux  riches. 

Why  Mr.  Gladstone,  who  changed  his  opinions  whenever 
it  suited  his  convenience,  after  turning  from  the  extremest 
Toryism  to  advanced  Liberalism,  should  have  been  credited 


212     THE  RECORD  OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

with  the  highest  political  morality,  while  Disraeli  who, 
having  once  chosen  his  party  stuck  to  it  all  his  life  without 
the  slightest  shadow  of  turning,  was  regarded  as  a  man  of 
few  scruples  I  am  at  loss  to  understand.  Both  men  entered 
political  affairs  with  the  thorough  determination  to  achieve 
complete  personal  success.  Gladstone  with  nearly  all  the 
advantages,  Disraeli  with  very  few.  But  the  truth  seems 
to  be  that,  unless  a  man  lives  to  a  green  old  age  and  achieves 
the  highest  position,  our  countrymen  cannot  appreciate  the 
sort  of  career  which  combines  great  literary  achievement  with 
remarkable  political  faculties.  If  Disraeli  had  died  twenty 
years  before  he  did  he  would  have  been  regarded  as  a  com- 
parative failure  for  at  least  a  generation  after  his  departure. 
As  it  was,  his  abilities  were  only  appreciated  very  late,  and 
then  more  for  what  he  probably  took  up  as  a  useful  political 
cry  rather  than  for  the  valuable  work  he  did  and  tried  to  do. 

My  view  of  Disraeli  with  the  exception  of  one  very  long 
interview  I  had  with  him  was  entirely  from  the  outside.  I 
never  heard  him  speak,  and  I  only  once  saw  him  in  the 
House  of  Commons.  What  attracted  me  to  his  career  was 
his  manifest  sympathy  for  democratic  and  social  progress  as 
opposed  to  middle-class  Liberal  hypocrisy  and  chicane,  and 
his  strenuous  opposition  to  the  advance  of  Russia,  at  a 
juncture  when  that  power  manifestly  threatened  danger  to 
democracy  in  Europe.  Maybe,  also,  the  desire  I  then  felt 
to  see  the  British  Empire  consolidated  so  far  as  its  free 
colonies  were  concerned,  with  India  liberated  from  our 
ruinous  dominance,  led  me  to  attach  higher  importance  to 
his  foreign  and  Colonial  policy  than  it  deserved,  viewed 
from  the  Socialist  standpoint. 

But  the  real  influence  of  the  Jew  statesman  upon  me  was 
due  not  so  much  to  his  political  as  to  his  literary  work. 
That  he  sympathised  with  the  revolutionary  Chartists  is,  I 
think,  quite  clear,  and  that  he  only  gave  up  his  adherence 
to  their  views  when  he  saw  that  it  was  quite  impossible 


DISRAELI  213 

their  ideas  should  attain  to  political  success  in  his  day  is, 
it  seems  to  me,  equally  manifest.  Nobody  can  read  Sybil 
carefully,  even  neglecting  the  hint  contained  in  the  second 
title,  The  Two  Nations,  without  recognising  that  the  same 
current  of  ideas  that  affected  Carlyle,  Ruskin,  Kingsley,  and 
other  well-known  writers  of  this  period  also  swept  Disraeli 
in  its  direction,  or  without  gaining  the  impression  that, 
although  compelled  by  the  exigencies  of  an  inferior  profes- 
sion —  for  party  politics  in  England  is  a  poor  calling,  how- 
ever well  remunerated  it  may  be  in  the  shape  of  money 
and  reputation  —  to  take  sides,  he  never  lost  a  chance  of 
helping  forward  the  political  emancipation  and  social  ad- 
vancement of  the  class  which  he  had  begun  by  supporting. 
I  wonder  how  many  of  Disraeli's  followers  have  ever  read 
Henrietta  Temple  through?  If  it  surprises  students  of 
Marx's  life  to  learn  that  he  began  by  writing  poetry,  it  must 
be  with  at  least  equal  astonishment  that  those  who  take  up 
Disraeli's  novels  peruse  the  love  letters  in  that  romance. 
Who  would  dream  of  the  sarcastic,  saturnine  politician  as 
the  writer  of  those  high-flown  epistles?  They  are  quite 
oriental  in  their  passionate  style  and  imagery.  Then,  again, 
who  would  think  of  Lord  Beaconsfield  as  nervous?  Yet  I 
remember  a  friend  who  had  watched  him  very  closely  under 
all  sorts  of  circumstances,  declaring  to  me  that  he  was  a 
man  of  the  keenest  sensitiveness  which  he  kept  under  relent- 
less control,  and  that  his  strange  calm  immovable  face  was 
only  a  mask  covering  very  strong  emotions.  However  that 
may  be,  his  power  of  influencing  other  men  either  in  the 
way  of  attraction  or  repulsion  was  remarkable.  Frederick 
Greenwood  was  never  the  same  man  after  his  interview  with 
the  Tory  leader  on  the  Suez  Canal  business.  His  faculty  of 
criticism  where  Lord  Beaconsfield  was  concerned  seemed  to 
have  left  him,  and  his  admiration  for  the  Imperialist  states- 
man intensified  the  dislike  of  his  rival  which  was  already 
keen  enough. 


214  THE  RECORD   OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

On  the  other  hand,  of  course,  there  were  men  and  women 
who,  ordinarily  sound  in  their  judgment  of  politics  and 
business,  could  see  no  good  in  anything  Disraeli  ever  did. 
My  old  college  friend,  James  Lowther,  was  one  of  these; 
although  he  had  held  office  under  him  and  had  therefore 
shared  in  the  political  success  which  at  that  particular 
period  Disraeli  and  Disraeli  alone  could  have  obtained  for 
the  party.  Disraeli  was  to  him  the  " damned  old  Jew"  for 
all  time,  and  Lowther  represented  quite  a  large  number  of 
his  party,  alike  in  his  sturdy  conservatism  of  an  English 
sportsman  and  in  his  strong  prejudices  against  people  he 
could  not  understand. 

After  Lord  Beaconsfield  had  returned  from  his  unwilling 
" Peace  with  Honour"  expedition  to  Berlin,  which  he  knew 
very  well  had  benefited  Germany  and  Austria  —  tertius 
gaudens  —  more  than  anybody  else,  and  the  Treaty  of 
Berlin  was  " being  carried  out  feet  foremost"  his  career 
with  all  its  great  adventures  was  at  an  end.  This,  no 
doubt,  he  felt  himself;  for  the  long  conflict  between  Lord 
Salisbury  and  Disraeli  in  the  Cabinet  had  ended  in  favour 
of  the  former  when,  owing  to  Mr.  Ward  Hunt's  illness,  Lord 
Beaconsfield  found  himself  in  a  minority,  and,  but  for  the 
Queen's  own  personal  request  to  him,  would  have  resigned 
office.  It  was  a  curious  position  and  all  sorts  of  stories 
were  current.  That  Prince  Bismarck  formed  a  very  high 
opinion  of  "that  old  Jew's"  sagacity  there  is  no  doubt; 
whether,  however,  he  committed  himself  so  far  as  to  con- 
trast the  two  English  plenipotentiaries,  after  the  fashion 
which  was  commonly  believed  at  the  time,  to  the  great  dis- 
advantage of  Lord  Salisbury,  may  well  be  doubted.  There 
is  one  anecdote,  however,  which  I  like  to  believe  was  true ; 
though  as  Bismarck  and  Disraeli  were  alone  at  the  time  the 
incident  occurred  we  must  suppose  in  this  case  that  either 
the  German  or  the  English  statesman  was  unduly  com- 
municative. 


DISRAELI  215 

The  two  men  are  represented  as  having  a  large  map  of 
the  world  before  them,  discussing  the  question  of  colonisa- 
tion, to  which  Prince  Bismarck  at  that  time  was,  or  thought 
it  wise  to  appear  to  be,  opposed.  During  the  conversation 
Disraeli's  first  finger  wandered,  as  if  by  accident,  over  the 
great  area  of  country  covered  by  what  are  still  known,  as  a 
whole,  as  "the  Balkan  Provinces."  "Don't  you  think  there 
is  some  fine  colonisation  ground  here?"  asked  the  English 
Premier.  Bismarck's  reply  is  not  on  record ;  but  the 
struggle  for  domination  in  the  near  East  now  going  on  shows 
that  the  English  Plenipotentiary  was  not  far  wrong  in  his 
anticipations. 

I  used  to  hear  a  good  deal  about  Prince  Bismarck  and 
his  views  and  methods  from  Dr.  Rudolph  Meyer,  who  was 
'one  of  his  private  secretaries,  and  who,  having  incurred  his 
displeasure,  made  off  to  Austria  and  England  in  order  to 
get  out  of  the  old  Berserker's  way  and  thus  avoid  imprison- 
ment. What  his  precise  offence  was  Meyer  never  told  me. 
But  he  gave  me  a  most  amusing  description  of  the  Chancel- 
lor's efforts  to  make  up  for  lost  time  in  the  domain  of  political 
economy  of  which  he  was  entirely  ignorant,  even  after  his 
conversations  with  Lassalle.  As  Meyer  himself  truly  said : 
"The  day  will  never  come  when  a  Professor  of  Political 
Economy,  as  such,  will  be  a  statesman ;  but  the  day  when  a 
statesman  can  afford  to  be  ignorant  of  political  economy 
has  come  already."  So,  no  doubt,  Prince  Bismarck  felt 
before  Meyer  thus  sententiously  formulated  his  position. 
Felt  his  own  shortcomings  and  tried  to  remedy  them.  And 
that  is  how  it  happened  that  my  old  friend  found  the  Chan- 
cellor one  night  with  works  on  "the  dismal  science"  strewn 
on  the  floor  all  round  him,  his  head  wrapped  in  a  wet  towel, 
studying  hard  to  master  problems  which,  as  Meyer  said,  he 
ought  to  have  been  familiar  with  in  his  youth. 

Disraeli,  probably,  was  as  little  versed  in  political  economy 
as  Bismarck,  certainly  his  public  utterances  give  no  evi- 


216     THE  RECORD  OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

dence  of  deep  knowledge  of  the  subject;  but  he  had  suffi- 
cient sympathy  with  the  agitators  of  an  earlier  day  to  be 
able  to  anticipate  in  some  degree  the  social  needs  of  the 
period;  though,  like  Lord  Randolph  Churchill  at  a  later 
date,  he  was  wholly  unable  to  take  his  party  with  him. 
But  I  have  always  regarded  this  encounter  at  Berlin  between 
the  German  and  the  Jew  Englishman  as  one  of  the  most 
dramatic  political  events  of  our  time.  It  was  not  Lord 
Beaconsfield's  policy  that  was  winning,  and,  of  course, 
Prince  Bismarck  was  very  well  aware  of  this ;  but  he  under- 
stood, nevertheless,  that  he  was  face  to  face  with  a  profound 
and  subtle  intellect  in  the  political  sphere,  and  it  would 
have  been  interesting  to  know  what  each  really  thought  of 
the  other. 

I  have  never  felt  anything  at  all  approaching  to  the  same 
admiration  for  the  politician,  successful  or  unsuccessful,  that 
I  have  for  the  man  of  ideas,  whether  in  science,  art,  litera- 
ture or  sociology.  The  mere  Parliament  man,  who  does  no 
more  than  trim  his  sails  to  suit  the  breezes  of  popularity, 
or  manipulate  the  votes  of  the  day  for  the  advantage  of  his 
party,  can  rarely  display,  even  if  he  himself  possesses  them, 
the  higher  faculties  of  originality  and  initiative.  He  is  too 
much  limited  by  his  surroundings  and  by  the  human  tools 
he  has  at  his  disposal.  If,  therefore,  even  the  astronomer, 
or  the  chemist,  or  the  social  philosopher  is  inevitably  the 
creature  of  his  environment,  and  can  do  no  more  than  help 
to  anticipate  by  his  genius  results  which  would  almost  cer- 
tainly be  attained  a  generation  or  two  later  in  any  case, 
it  is  obvious  that  the  statesman,  however  eminent  he  may 
be,  is  still  more  restricted  in  his  field  of  operations.  But  in 
Great  Britain  this  is  not  the  general  view.  The  prominent 
politician,  or  general,  or  admiral,  is  the  really  great  man 
to  whom  statues  are  raised  or  days  of  celebration  devoted. 
Darwin,  Faraday,  Simpson,  Robert  Owen  or  Thomas  Paine, 
Shelley  or  Dickens  or  Browning  are  placed  upon  a  much 


DISRAELI  217 

lower  level  than  Canning,  Peel  or  Palmerston,  Gladstone  or 
Disraeli. 

To  us  English  the  political  arena  is  the  great  dramatic 
show  of  the  day  and  of  every  day.  It  is  like  Laurence 
Oliphant's  novel  Piccadilly,  which  gave  the  actual  experi- 
ences of  his  personages  as  going  on  simultaneously  with  the 
record  of  the  daily  doings  of  the  world.  The  continual  play 
of  life  and  character  in  Parliament,  on  the  best  platform, 
with  the  best  sounding  board  in  the  world,  gives  English- 
men a  direct  interest  in  politics  which  is  almost  equal  to 
the  excitement  they  derive  from  horse-racing  and  football. 
The  conflicts  of  the  principal  political  leaders,  ever  in  the 
public  eye  with  the  limelight  of  the  Press  continuously 
thrown  upon  them,  constitute  a  sort  of  gladiatorial  display, 
in  which  intellectual  skill  of  fence,  oratorical  ability  and 
tactical  dexterity  in  party  affairs  have  taken  the  place  of 
physical  training  and  mastery  of  weapons  in  the  Circus. 
With  these  ideas  in  my  mind  as  to  the  relative  importance 
even  of  the  highest  and  most  successful  politicians,  I  went  to 
see  Lord  Beaconsfield  at  the  end  of  his  life  in  Curzon  Street 
without  any  of  that  feeling  of  hesitation  which  came  over  me 
when  I  visited  the  great  Italian  agitator  in  the  purlieus  of 
Fulham,  or  when  I  first  called  upon  the  greater  German  the- 
orist in  the  commonplace  surroundings  of  Haverstock  Hill. 

My  object  in  seeking  an  interview  with  the  famous  old 
statesman  at  all  was,  if  possible,  to  enlist  Lord  Beaconsfield's 
sympathies  in  favour  of  the  policy  which  I  was  absolutely 
convinced  in  1881  as  I  am  to-day  was  the  policy  that,  if 
taken  up  in  earnest  and  pushed  vigorously  and  persistently 
to  its  legitimate  conclusion,  could  alone  save  this  country 
and  the  empire  from  disastrous  collapse.  Lord  Beacons- 
field,  though  he  had  retired  from  active  politics,  still  retained 
great  influence,  and  if  I  could,  by  some  happy  chance, 
obtain  his  help  on  the  side  I  took,  he  might  at  the  very 
close  of  his  life  help  to  divert  the  people  of  the  United 


218  THE   RECORD   OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

Kingdom  from  the  sordid,  barren  Imperialism,  which  even 
then  was  deteriorating  the  intelligence  of  the  educated 
classes,  to  a  higher  conception  of  our  duties  towards  our 
fellow-subjects  and  mankind  at  large. 

This  may  appear  to  have  been  a  very  quixotic  mission  on 
my  part.  Lord  Beaconsfield  was  supposed  to  be  the  greatest 
and  most  capable  Imperialist  of  his  time,  and  Tory  Democ- 
racy was  certainly  not  translated  by  his  party  as  meaning 
anything  very  democratic,  or  as  calculated  to  lessen,  in  any 
way,  the  supremacy  of  the  mother  country  over  its  con- 
quered dependencies  abroad,  or  the  domination  of  the  upper 
classes  over  the  producing  class  at  home.  That,  in  spite  of 
all  this,  I  hoped  to  be  successful  in  my  attempt  is  a  tribute 
to  my  sanguine  temperament,  or  possibly  the  unfriendly 
might  say  conclusive  evidence  of  my  sublime  self-confidence. 

And  so  in  1881  when  I  stood  at  Lord  Beaconsfield's  door, 
I  was  thinking  much  more  of  what  I  wanted  to  say  to  him 
than  of  what  he  might  be  good  enough  to  say  to  me.  I 
knew  I  had  to  deal  with  a  man  of  imagination,  who  had 
conceptions  far  above  the  level  of  the  miserable  buy-cheap- 
and-sell-dear  school  which  had  so  long  prevailed  over  our 
policy,  wholly  regardless  of  the  well-being  of  the  people  so 
long  as  the  capitalist  and  profit-making  class  gained  wealth. 
Having  also  achieved  all  that  could  be  achieved  in  the 
domain  of  politics  and  society,  there  was  no  reason  why  he 
should  not  take  an  impartial  view  of  the  future.  Ushered 
up  into  the  drawing-room  I  found  myself  in  two  apartments 
of  moderate  size  with  old-fashioned  folding  doors  between 
them  thrown  open.  The  furniture,  which  also  seemed  old- 
fashioned,  was  upholstered  in  red  damask,  and  the  curtains 
and  wall-paper  were  red,  much  gilding  being  apparent 
everywhere.  The  whole  was  a  gorgeous  colour  symphony 
in  scarlet  and  gold.  Entering  from  a  doorway  in  the  back 
room  came  a  strange  figure,  likewise,  I  was  going  to  say, 
upholstered  in  red;  for  that  was  the  impression  produced 


DISRAELI  219 

upon  me  as  Lord  Beaconsfield,  in  a  long  red  gabardine,  came 
very  slowly  and  almost  painfully  forward,  with  his  head 
somewhat  bowed,  one  eye  completely  and  the  other  eye 
partially  closed. 

As  this  strange  figure  with  its  remarkable  face,  so  deeply 
lined,  with  the  curl  over  the  forehead  showing  so  clearly 
above,  and  the  lower  lip  protruding  so  strongly  below, 
advanced  into  the  room,  it  came  across  my  mind  that  I 
had  to  do  with  a  resuscitated  mummy  of  the  same  race 
whose  previous  existence  had  been  in  the  Nile  Valley,  what 
time  the  Pharaohs  had  held  his  Semitic  forefathers  in  sub- 
jection. And  it  occurred  to  me,  too,  that  if  my  views  were 
of  any  value  I  might  succeed  in  raising  those  closed  and 
half-closed  lids,  and  awakening  something  akin  to  vitality 
in  that  mask-like  face.  And  then,  as  suddenly,  the  remem- 
brance of  those  satirical  utterances  by  this  same  inscrutable 
personage,  with  his  play-acting  propensities  and  his  marvel- 
lous power  of  detachment,  came  back  to  me,  and  I  won- 
dered how  I  should  meet  similar  caustic  epigrams  if  he 
happened  to  indulge  in  them  at  my  expense. 

He  had,  for  instance,  been  specially  courteous  to  Pro- 
fessor Fawcett,  the  blind  Radical,  when  he  first  entered  the 
House  of  Commons,  sitting  by  him  outside,  and  talking  to 
him  in  so  pleasant  and  flattering  a  manner  that  Fawcett, 
who  had,  of  course,  no  idea  that  Disraeli  had  been  convers- 
ing with  him,  asked  a  neighbour  who  it  was  that  had  spoken 
so  kindly  and  appreciatively.  Yet  upon  a  friend  saying  to 
him  afterwards  as  Fawcett  was  boring  the  House  with  one 
of  his  long  dry  speeches:  "What  a  pity  it  is  Fawcett  has 
not  got  his  eyes."  Disraeli  replied,  "If  he  had  they  would 
have  been  damned  long  ago."  This  and  similar  remarks, 
I  say,  came  back  to  me,  and  I  hoped  I  should  be  able  to 
hold  the  old  statesman's  attention  sufficiently  to  keep  him 
from  such  vitriolic  criticism. 

He  took  a  seat  on  a  couch  by  the  fireplace  and  motioned 


220  THE  RECORD   OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

me  to  an  armchair  by  his  side.  The  move  was  to  me.  It 
was  like  opening  a  conversation  with  a  graven  image.  I 
began,  I  remember,  by  expressing  my  regret  that  his 
policy  in  regard  to  Russia  had  not  carried  the  day;  as  all 
democrats  would  feel  that  this  huge  semi-barbarian  power 
gaining  strength  at  the  expense  of  its  southern  neighbour 
must  be  an  ever-increasing  danger  to  the  freedoms  of  Eu- 
rope, bound  up  as  she  inevitably  was  with  the  maintenance 
of  the  military  autocracies  to  the  west  of  her,  and  that  I 
could  not  believe,  even  now  peace  had  been  brought  about, 
that  the  position,  with  Cyprus  annexed  and  the  doubtful 
gendarmerie  experiment  in  Asia  Minor  undertaken,  was 
quite  what  he  would  have  wished.  He  bowed  his  head. 
And  I  went  on  to  say  that  I  specially  mourned  the  over- 
throw of  his  administration  because  I  felt  that,  as  Sir  Louis 
Mallet  had  put  it  to  me,  the  last  chance  of  justice  being  done 
to  India  had  faded.  This  was  venturing  on  dangerous 
ground ;  for  I  had  an  idea  that  Lord  Beaconsfield,  having 
given  up  the  lead  to  Lord  Salisbury,  in  what  was  still  nomi- 
nally his  own  Ministry,  was  scarcely  in  sympathy  with  the 
policy  which  Lord  Cranbrook,  with  the  support  of  other 
members  of  the  Government,  had  begun:  the  gradually 
building  up,  that  is  to  say,  of  Indian  rule  in  Hindustan 
under  British  guidance.  However,  all  that  followed  this 
was  another  assenting  motion  of  the  head. 

Thereupon,  I  touched  upon  domestic  affairs,  and  said 
I  had  hoped  to  witness  an  inauguration  at  home  of  some 
such  palliative  social  policy  as  that  which  he  had  shadowed 
forth  in  his  early  works,  and  had  since,  from  time  to  time, 
as  I  understood,  endeavoured  to  press  upon  his  colleagues. 
I  added  that,  in  my  opinion,  the  only  hope  of  rapid  im- 
provement in  this  direction,  Radical  and  Socialist  as  I  was, 
lay  with  the  Conservative  party.  Measures  of  this  kind,  if 
introduced  by  that  party,  could  not  be  opposed  by  the 
Liberals,  without  imperilling  their  cohesion  as  a  political 


DISRAELI  221 

organisation;  whereas,  if  the  Liberals  introduced  Bills  in 
favour  of  such  beneficial  social  changes,  the  more  reaction- 
ary Conservatives  would  be  sure  to  revolt  and  find  a  factious 
backing  in  the  country.  It  seemed  to  me,  therefore,  that 
what  was  going  on  in  India,  in  Ireland,  in  Egypt,  and  at 
home  was  worse  than  would  have  happened  had  the  Tory 
Government  remained  in  power. 

For  the  first  time  the  sphinx-like  figure  on  the  couch 
delivered  its  oracle.  In  deep,  low,  almost  sepulchral  tones 
it  said,  with  the  very  worst  French  accent  I  have  ever  heard, 
thickly  pronounced  and  almost  unintelligible,  "Tu  1'as  voulu 
Georges  Dandin,"  and  the  eye  that  was  half-closed  began 
to  open.  "If  you  mean  John  Bull  by  Georges  Dandin, 
Lord  Beaconsfield,  I  venture  to  say  the  issue  was  never 
properly  put  to  him.  Peace  with  Honour  was  a  dead 
formula:  Peace  with  Comfort  was  what  the  people  wanted 
to  hear  about."  He  turned  towards  me  at  this  little  joke, 
and  the  other  eyelid  began  to  lift.  "  Peace  with  Comfort 
is  not  a  bad  phrase.  Who  used  it?"  asked  the  deep,  slow 
voice.  "Why,  I  did,  of  course,"  I  replied,  rather  sharply. 
"Who  else?"  The  moment  I  had  uttered  the  words  I  felt 
they  might  have  offended  the  old  gentleman,  which  I  need 
scarcely  say  was  not  at  all  what  I  wished  to  do.  But  they 
had  quite  the  opposite  effect.  He  appeared  to  wake  up 
entirely,  opened  both  eyes,  and,  I  could  not  be  deceived, 
the  face  smiled  as  he  now  turned  full  towards  me. 

"You  have,  I  presume,  some  ideas  on  the  subject,  Mr. 
Hyndman?"  I  said  I  had,  and  that  it  was  upon  this  I 
wished  to  have  his  opinion.  "What  do  you  mean  by  com- 
fort, then?"  "Plenty  to  eat,  enough  to  drink,  good  clothes, 
pleasant  homes,  thorough  education  and  sufficient  leisure 
for  all."  "Utopia  made  to  order?"  "Rather  a  happy  life 
for  everybody  growing  naturally  out  of  the  conditions  of 
our  time."  "A  pleasing  dream,  not,  I  fear,  easily  realised 
in  fact.  And  how  would  you  begin?" 


222  THE  RECORD   OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

Thus  encouraged  I  set  to  work  in  earnest,  and  put  before 
the  old  statesman  things  as  I  saw  them  and  as  I  wished  them 
to  be.  At  that  time,  it  may  be  borne  in  mind,  laissez-faire 
still  held  mastery  in  England,  and  Socialism  in  its  modern 
form  was  almost  unknown  in  this  island.  I  was  full  of  the 
matter  myself,  and  eager  to  put  my  ideas  into  words.  I 
referred,  therefore,  to  the  efforts  of  the  Chartists  with 
which  Lord  Beaconsfield  had  sympathised  in  his  youth,  and 
urged  that  the  work  they  had  set  on  foot  should  be  taken 
up  afresh  and  applied  to  the  more  advanced  period  we  had 
reached.  Without  complete  education  of  the  whole  people 
nothing  could  be  done.  They  must  be  intelligent  partici- 
pators in  the  changes  to  be  brought  about,  and  the  com- 
pletest  democratic  forms  ought  to  be  placed  at  their  dis- 
posal in  order  that  they  should  be  able  peacefully  to  help 
in  the  transformation  by  their  own  initiative  and  voting 
power. 

"I  have  done  all  that  I  could  do  in  the  latter  direction." 
"But  it  needs  also  much  superior  education,"  I  answered, 
"to  any  we  have  to-day  for  the  democracy  to  comprehend 
the  real  issues,  and  to  exercise  their  influence  in  an  under- 
standing way."  "Your  difficulties  have  then  already 
begun."  "Of  course  there  are  difficulties,  or  success  would 
have  been  achieved  already,  but  a  democracy  without  edu- 
cation can  mean  only  either  perpetuation  of  the  present 
anarchical  system,  or  worse  anarchy  still  with  no  system. 
There  is  no  other  way  out  than  through  collective  organi- 
sation by  the  democracy  under  its  chosen  agents  for  the 
benefit  of  all.  You  admit  that."  "I  admit  nothing,  Mr. 
Hyndman,  I  am  listening  to  you."  "Well,  we  cannot  go 
on  as  we  are  going  without  national  decay  and  eventual 
collapse.  Our  people  are  being  crushed  into  the  cities, 
where  they  lose  their  bodily  and  mental  vigour,  or  the 
more  capable  of  them  emigrate  straight  from  the  country 
to  the  Colonies,  and  leave  only  the  weaklings  to  perpetuate 


DISRAELI  223 

the  race  at  home.  The  process  of  deterioration  is  going 
on  steadily.  There  are  fewer  agriculturists  every  year, 
and  the  recruiting  ground  for  healthy  inhabitants  of  the 
cities  is  thus  being  reduced  every  year.  All  can  see  that 
the  physique  of  the  population  is  falling  off.  And  at 
the  very  same  time  we  are  grasping  more  territory  than 
ever  before/' 

"Suppose  all  you  say  is  true,  what  then?" 

"We  must  recognise  this  truth  at  once,  and  reorganise 
our  entire  Empire  at  home  and  abroad,  replacing  go-as- 
you-please  by  a  resolute  policy  of  general  social  improve- 
ment throughout  Britain,  adopting  Home  Rule  and  general 
Colonial  Federation  instead  of  domination,  and  granting  self- 
government  to  India.  This  would  bring  us  abreast  of  a 
great  and  harmonious  policy  that  would,  possessing  a  power- 
ful navy,  give  us,  with  our  extraordinary  geographical 
position,  the  lead  of  the  democratic  movement  throughout 
the  world."  "Why  not  say  Socialist  movement?  That  is 
what  you  mean."  "I  have  no  objection,  though  we  are 
barely  ready  for  that  yet."  And  then,  as  Lord  Beaconsfield 
kept  on  asking  questions  and  making  short  comments,  I 
went  clean  through  the  whole  thing.  In  the  middle  of  it 
Lord  Rowton  sent  up  the  butler  to  say  he  was  ready  for 
Lord  Beaconsfield  if  he  should  at  all  need  him.  I  rose  at 
once  to  go.  "Tell  Lord  Rowton  with  my  compliments  I 
shall  be  glad  if  he  will  wait  for  me  for  a  few  minutes."  I 
sat  down  again  and  started  at  it  once  more,  until  I  had 
contrived  to  tumble  out  somehow,  in  the  additional  hour  to 
which  the  few  minutes  extended,  pretty  nearly  all  I  had  to 
say,  advocating  collective  control  and  ownership  in  every 
direction. 

"And  you  think,"  said  Lord  Beaconsfield,  "you  have 
any  chance  of  carrying  out  such  a  policy  as  things  stand 
here  to-day?"  I  replied  I  could  not  feel  confident,  but  I 
would  have  a  good  try  at  it.  "You  can  never  carry  it  out 


224     THE  RECORD  OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

with  the  Conservative  party.  That  is  quite  certain.  Your 
life  would  become  a  burden  to  you.  It  is  only  possible 
through  such  a  democracy  as  you  speak  of.  The  moment 
you  tried  to  realise  it  on  our  side  you  would  find  yourself 
surrounded  by  a  phalanx  of  the  great  families  who  would 
thwart  you  at  every  turn:  they  and  their  women.  And 
you  would  be  no  better  off  on  the  other  side."  "But  this 
party  system,"  I  rejoined,  "need  not  go  on  for  ever?" 
"No,  but  private  property  which  you  hope  to  communise, 
and  vested  interests  which  you  openly  threaten,  have  a 
great  many  to  speak  up  for  them  still.  I  do  not  say  it  to 
discourage  you,  but  you  have  taken  upon  yourself  a  very  — 
heavy  —  work  indeed,  and  (smiling),  even  now  you  are 
not  a  very  young  man  to  have  so  much  zeal  and  enthusiasm. 
It  is  a  very  difficult  country  to  move,  Mr.  Hyndman,  a  very 
difficult  country  indeed,  and  one  in  which  there  is  more 
disappointment  to  be  looked  for  than  success.  But  you  do 
intend  to  go  on?"  I  said  I  did.  "Then  I  shall  have  the 
pleasure  of  seeing  you  again." 

But  I  never  did  see  Lord  Beaconsfield  again.  He  had 
an  attack  of  illness  shortly  afterwards,  and  died  within  a 
few  weeks.  Taking  a  lady  of  my  acquaintance,  who  knew 
of  this  long  interview  with  me,  down  to  dinner,  two  days 
later,  she  asked  him  how  it  went  on.  The  reply  was,  "Your 
friend  Mr.  Hyndman  came  to  talk,  and  I  am  bound  to  tell 
you  he  did  talk,"  but  she  herself  gave  me  to  understand 
that  his  tone  about  the  whole  thing  was  very  friendly. 
Certainly,  nothing  could  have  been  more  so  than  his  attitude 
during  the  three  hours  I  was  with  him.  The  impression 
Lord  Beaconsfield  left  upon  my  mind  was  that  he  was  dis- 
satisfied with  the  great  personal  success  he  had  achieved, 
and  would  have  wished  his  life  to  have  been  other  than  it 
was.  Whether  this  impression  was  due  to  any  pose  on  his 
part,  or  arose  from  the  sheer  weariness  he  suffered  from  at 
the  end  of  a  long  and  arduous  career,  it  is,  of  course,  im- 


DISRAELI  225 

possible  for  me  to  say.  From  that  day  to  this,  however,  I 
have  always  felt  that  Benjamin  Disraeli  was  neither  so 
thorough-going  an  Imperialist,  nor  to  himself  so  triumphant 
a  personality  as  his  enthusiastic  admirers  and  decorators  of 
his  statue  believe  every  April  19th. 


CHAPTER  XV 

START  OF   SOCIAL   DEMOCRACY 

DURING  the  opening  months  of  1881  several  more  or 
less  important  gatherings  were  held  with  a  view  to 
establishing  a  really  democratic  party  in  opposition  to  the 
monstrous  tyranny  of  Mr.  Gladstone  and  his  Whigs  in  Ireland 
and  their  equally  abominable  policy  in  Egypt,  with  the 
object  also  of  bringing  about  democratic  changes  in  Eng- 
land. Among  those  who  took  part  in  these  preliminary 
meetings  were  Mr.  Joseph  Cowen,  then  member  for  New- 
castle and  quite  at  his  best  as  an  orator,  both  in  and  out  of 
the  House  of  Commons ;  Professor  Beesly,  the  well-known 
Positivist  who  took  the  chair  at  the  first  public  meeting 
of  the  " International"  in  1864;  Helen  Tayltfr,  the  step- 
daughter of  John  Stuart  Mill;  Herbert  Burrows,  Morrison 
Davidson,  Butler  Johnstone,  for  fifteen  years  the  Tory 
member  for  Canterbury  and  a  strong  philo-Turk;  the  two 
brothers  James  and  Charles  Murray,  old  Chartists,  inti- 
mate friends  of  Bronterre  O'Brien,  and  like  him  Catholics; 
Morgan  and  Townsend  and  Oliver,  also  old  Chartists;  Dr. 
G.  B.  Clark,  an  active  Radical  and  free-thinker,  afterwards 
member  for  Caithness;  Justin  McCarthy,  the  Irish  M.P. 
and  popular  historian  and  writer;  John  Williams,  the 
famous  proletarian  agitator  and  leader  of  the  unemployed; 
James  Macdonald,  Joseph  Lane,  Garcia  and  many  more. 
I  was  the  main  mover  in  calling  these  meetings  together,  but 
with  the  exception  of  Butler-Johnstone,  Justin  McCarthy  and 
Joseph  Cowen  I  scarcely  knew  any  of  those  present. 

At   the    principal   meeting   at   the   Westminster   Palace 

226 


START  OF  SOCIAL  DEMOCRACY  227 

Hotel,  which  I  myself  called,  I  leant  over  to  Herbert  Bur- 
rows and  asked  him  his  name,  while  even  sturdy  Jack 
Williams  I  was  only  recently  acquainted  with;  though  he 
had  come  up  to  Devonshire  Street  to  talk  to  me  and  I  had 
seen  him  at  the  old  revolutionary  club  in  Rose  Street.  Of 
course,  with  so  many  different  sections  involved,  it  was 
impossible  at  first  to  agree  upon  much  beyond  a  thorough- 
going political  programme,  and  I  very  much  doubt  whether 
any  of  those  present,  except  myself,  Jack  Williams  and  per- 
haps Butler-Johnstone,  had  the  least  idea  that  it  was  in- 
tended to  lead  up  to  the  formation  of  a  Socialist  party  in 
Great  Britain.  This,  too,  although  already  lectures  were 
being  delivered  in  the  Radical  Clubs  on  "The  Curse  of 
Capital'7  and  similar  subjects  by  myself  and  one  or  two 
more. 

There  was  certainly  no  general  feeling  in  this  direction, 
and  it  was  not  considered  of  the  slightest  importance  that 
even  so  revered  a  person  as  Mr.  John  Stuart  Mill  was  among 
the  advanced  Radicals  at  the  close  of  his  life  and  had  declared 
almost  without  reserve  in  favour  of  Socialism.  I  felt  that 
a  blow  ought  to  be  struck,  but  how  or  when  to  strike  it  I 
scarcely  knew.  We  had  gradually  gathered  around  us 
enough  of  the  Radical  Clubs  and  Irish  committees  of  the 
metropolis  to  call  a  Conference  of  all  in  sympathy  with  our 
programme.  The  decision  to  call  this  Conference  was  arrived 
at,  I  think,  at  the  end  of  April  or  the  beginning  of  May  1881. 
I  still  felt  greatly  puzzled  as  to  what  I  ought  to  do,  especially 
as  it  was  arranged  that  I  should  take  the  chair. 

After  talking  the  whole  matter  over  carefully  with  my 
wife,  I  came  to  the  conclusion  that  I  ought  to  take  a  plunge 
myself  and  that,  as  Tory  Democracy  was  beginning  to  make 
way  and  Liberalism  had  given  itself  over  to  Coercion  and 
Aggression,  I  ought  to  formulate  a  definite  policy  for  the 
whole  Empire,  giving  at  the  same  time  full  expression  to 
those  ideas  of  the  Socialists  which  the  new  organisation 


228     THE  RECORD  OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

intended  to  advocate.  I  told  nobody  of  my  intention,  but 
I  set  to  work  at  once  to  write  my  little  book  England  for  Ally 
which  contained  a  longer  exposition  of  the  summary  of 
my  views  that  I  had  tumbled  out  on  Lord  Beaconsfield  and 
was  the  first  Socialist  work  that  appeared  up  to  1881  in 
English.  I  do  not  pretend  for  a  moment  that  this  booklet 
covered  the  whole  of  the  ground  by  any  means ;  but,  in  the 
main,  the  policy  therein  sketched  out  for  Home,  Colonial, 
Irish,  Indian  and  Foreign  Affairs  holds  the  field  to-day; 
though  very  unfortunately,  as  I  think,  our  governing  classes, 
instead  of  taking  the  lead  in  carrying  it  out,  as  they  might 
and  should  have  done,  have  put  every  possible  obstacle  in 
the  way  of  progress  in  every  direction.  What  I  hoped  to  see 
was  an  England  that,  having  reorganised  herself  at  home 
and  abandoned  mere  dominant  imperialism  abroad,  was 
able  to  come  to  the  front,  with  its  free  federated  communi- 
ties, as  the  champion  of  national  freedom,  democracy  and 
Socialism,  in  Europe  and  all  over  the  world.  What  I 
longed  to  realise  then  seems  scarcely  attainable  even  now. 
Here  nevertheless  is  my  dream  of  that  day,  the  concluding 
passage  of  my  England  for  All: 

"Thus  in  every  direction  the  policy  of  the  democracy  is 
clear  and  well-defined.  Freedom,  social  reorganisation, 
thorough  unity  at  home,  justice,  self-government,  and  con- 
sideration for  our  colonies  and  dependencies,  and  a  warm 
friendship  and  ready  assistance  for  the  oppressed  peoples 
abroad,  —  such  is  the  work  we  are  called  upon  to  begin 
and  carry  out.  Democracy,  which  the  so-called  '  governing- 
classes'  jeer  at  as  anarchy,  incapacity,  and  self-seeking, 
means  a  close  confederation,  first,  of  our  own  people,  and 
next,  of  the  workers  of  the  civilised  world.  This  is  a  policy 
not  of  to-day  or  of  to-morrow,  now  to  be  taken  up  and 
again  to  be  laid  aside :  it  is  an  undertaking  in  which  each 
can  continuously  bear  his  share,  and  hand  on  the  certainty 
of  success  to  his  fellow. 


START   OF  SOCIAL  DEMOCRACY  229 

"The  current  of  events  will  help  on  the  cause  of  the 
people.  Within  the  past  generation  greater  changes  have 
been  wrought  than  in  centuries  of  human  existence  before. 
For  the  first  time  in  the  history  of  mankind  the  whole  earth 
is  at  our  feet.  Railways,  telegraphs,  steam  communication, 
have  but  just  begun  to  exercise  an  influence.  Education 
and  intercourse  are  breaking  down  the  barriers  of  ages. 
The  men  who  do  the  work  of  the  world  are  learning  from 
one  another  how  it  is  that  the  poor  and  the  miserable,  the 
unfortunate  and  the  weak,  suffer  and  fall  by  the  wayside. 
In  our  own  country,  which  has  led  the  way  to  the  new  stage 
of  social  development,  all  can  see  that  the  lot  of  the  many 
is  sad,  whilst  the  few  are  rich  and  luxurious  far  beyond 
what  is  beneficial  even  to  them.  Our  action  in  redress  of 
these  inequalities  and  the  better  ordering  of  our  affairs  will 
guide  and  encourage  the  world.  We,  perhaps,  alone  among 
the  peoples  can  carry  out  with  peace,  order,  and  content- 
ment, those  changes  which  continental  revolutionists  have 
sought  through  anarchy  and  bloodshed.  Religion,  which 
should  have  helped  in  this  striving  for  a  happier  period, 
has  suffered  the  rich  and  powerful  to  twist  its  teachings  to 
their  own  account.  Now,  therefore,  is  the  time,  in  the  face 
of  difficulties  and  dangers  which  threaten  from  many  quar- 
ters, for  Englishmen  of  all  classes,  creeds,  and  conditions, 
to  push  aside  the  petty  bickerings  of  faction  or  the  degrad- 
ing influence  of  mere  selfish  interests,  to  the  end  that  by 
sympathy  and  fellow-feeling  for  their  own  and  for  others  - 
they  may  hold  up  a  nobler  ideal  to  mankind.  Such  an  ideal 
is  not  unreal  or  impracticable.  Not  as  yet  of  course  can  we 
hope  to  realise  more  than  a  portion  of  that  for  which  we 
strive.  But  if  only  we  are  true  to  one  another,  and  stand 
together  in  the  fight,  the  brightness  of  the  future  is  ours  — 
the  day  before  us  and  the  night  behind.  So,  when  those 
who  come  after  look  back  to  these  islands  as  we  now  look 
back  to  Athens  or  Palestine  they  shall  say:  'This  was 


230     THE  RECORD  OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

glory  —  this  true  domination :  these  men  builded  on  eternal 
foundations  their  might,  majesty,  dominion,  and  power."' 

Well,  this  work  with  its  clear  Socialist  tendencies  and 
proposals  I  had  nicely  printed  and  bound,  and  presented  it 
to  every  delegate  who  attended  our  First  Conference,  as  we 
now  reckon  it,  held  on  June  8,  1881.  The  Conference  itself 
went  off  well  enough,  was  indeed  a  distinct  success ;  though 
my  friend  Dr.  Clark  in  his  eagerness  to  overturn  the  Mon- 
archy, insisted  upon  having  a  pronouncement  in  favour  of 
Republicanism,  which  I  ruled  out  of  order,  with  the  result 
that  there  were,  as  the  French  say,  "  movements  in  various 
senses."  But  that  Conference  was  the  public  commence- 
ment of  a  really  great  movement,  and  that  the  organisation 
then  set  on  foot  was  started  on  the  right  lines  is  clear  from 
the  fact  that  it  has  lasted  continuously  from  that  day  to 
this  as  by  far  the  most  active  and  initiative  Socialist  body 
in  the  United  Kingdom,  and  has  indeed  continued  in  exist- 
ence for  a  much  longer  time  than  any  organisation  of  and 
for  the  people  ever  established  in  this  island.  But  England 
for  All,  the  "Text  Book  of  Democracy,"  the  exposition  of 
the  policy  of  the  new  party  as  I  called  it  on  its  neat  blue 
cover,  was  scarcely  so  successful  at  the  moment.  On  the 
contrary,  its  publication  led  to  the  withdrawal  of  several 
prominent  friends  who  saw  clearly  enough  that  the  col- 
lectivist  and  Socialist  doctrines  which  were  therein  ex- 
pounded must  lead  in  the  long  run  to  the  final  breakdown 
of  capitalist  individualism.  So  they  went  their  way,  though 
some  of  them  came  back  in  after  years. 

Unfortunately,  however,  England  for  All  did  worse  than 
this  so  far  as  I  was  personally  concerned.  It  led  to  the 
breach  with  Marx  to  which  I  refer  below.  Engels  induced 
him  to  believe  that  I  was  a  very  ambitious  person  who  was 
about  to  use  the  organisation  I  had  set  on  foot  to  my  own  ad- 
vantage, and  that  I  had  plagiarised  some  of  Marx's  ideas  to  aid 
me  in  my  nefarious  projects.  How  funny  this  reads  to-day. 


START   OF  SOCIAL  DEMOCRACY  231 

But  Marx  took  it  all  as  truth,  and,  from  that  date  on- 
wards, for  years,  first  Marx,  until  shortly  before  his  death 
when  a  reconciliation  took  place,  and  then  Engels,  per- 
sistently vilified  and  traduced  me  in  their  conversations 
and  correspondence  as  a  self-seeking,  unscrupulous  person 
of  whom  all  good  Socialists  should  beware.  The  Letters  to 
Sorge  overflow  with  this  balderdash  and  with  silly  misrepre- 
sentations and  denunciations  of  the  only  Socialist  organisa- 
tion in  Great  Britain.  I  was,  indeed,  a  sort  of ' i  King  Charles' 
head"  to  Engels,  who,  as  his  private  letters  show,  dragged 
me  in  on  all  possible  occasions,  whether  my  appearance  on 
the  scene  were  relevant  to  the  matter  in  hand  or  not.  But 
I  don't  take  attacks  of  this  kind  with  the  calmness  of  the 
philosopher  and  the  Christian,  and  I  generally  contrive 
sooner  or  later  to  give  my  assailants  quite  as  good  as  they 
bring.  So  our  Teutonic  "  Grand  Llama  of  the  Regent's 
Park  Road,"  as  I  called  Engels,  by  reason  of  the  secluded 
life  he  led  and  the  servile  deference  he  exacted,  did  not 
have  matters  all  his  own  way;  though  with  respect  to  his 
writings  I  may  claim  on  excellent  grounds  that  I  was  the 
very  first  person  outside  Germany  to  give  him  full  credit 
for  the  admirable  work  he  had  done  for  the  movement 
independently  of  Marx. 

That,  however,  I  was  not  wrong  in  my  estimate  of  En- 
gels's  overbearing  character  and  outrageous  rudeness  will  be 
apparent  from  the  following  anecdote  of  what  befell  Adolphe 
Smith,  a  Social-Democrat  of  some  forty  years'  standing,  a 
master  of  his  own  subject,  national  and  international 
hygiene,  and  one  of  the  most  courteous  and  considerate  as 
he  is  one  of  the  ablest  of  men.  He  was  with  a  party  of 
Danish  Social-Democrats  who  were  going  to  pay  their 
respects  to  Engels  at  his  house.  They  asked  him  to  go  with 
them,  as  they  were  sure  Engels  would  be  glad  to  see  him. 
Smith  said  he  doubted  this,  as  Engels  bore  him  a  grudge  on 
account  of  a  dispute  in  the  International  some  twenty  years 


232     THE  RECORD  OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

before  when  Smith  was  little  more  than  a  lad.  The  Danish 
comrades,  however,  would  not  hear  anything  of  this,  and 
pressed  Smith  until  he  accompanied  them  on  their  visit. 

They  were  all  received  very  well  at  first,  Smith  passing 
in  unnoticed  with  the  rest.  But  in  the  course  of  conversa- 
tion one  of  the  Danes  addressed  Smith  in  such  wise  as  to 
awaken  the  memories  of  Engels.  He  jumped  up,  rushed 
up  to  Smith  saying,  "What,  are  you  Smith,  Smith-Heading- 
ley?  You  are!  then  get  out  of  my  house.  I  am  amazed 
you  should  have  had  the  impudence  to  come  here."  Other 
flattering  observations  followed,  until  Smith  got  in  a  word 
congratulating  the  old  bear  upon  his  notions  of  politeness 
and  hospitality  and  took  his  departure.  The  reason  for 
this  ungoverned  outburst  of  fury  was  that  Smith  had 
actually  joined  with  Vesinier  and  others  in  publishing  a 
manifesto  of  protest  against  the  autocratic,  drill-sergeant 
fashion  in  which  Marx  and  Engels  had  conducted  the  old 
International,  opposed  as  it  was  altogether  to  French  and 
English  notions  of  reasonable  consideration  for  those  with 
whom  they  were  working.  But  this,  as  I  say,  was  twenty 
years  before,  and  Engels  need  not  so  far  have  forgotten 
himself  in  his  own  house  as  to  lose  his  temper  on  so  ancient 
an  injury.  At  the  close  of  his  life,  when  he  was  dying  of 
cancer  of  the  throat  at  Eastbourne,  he  expressed  his  regret, 
however,  that  he  had  probably  been  mistaken  as  to  the 
Social-Democratic  Federation  and  myself.  He  certainly 
was  as  to  Adolphe  Smith. 

At  any  rate  the  Democratic  Federation  was  founded  and 
began  its  work  in  earnest.  The  rent  of  our  rooms  and  the 
salary  of  the  Secretary  were  paid  by  myself.  Few  even  of 
those  who  were  with  us  thought  much  would  come  of  it. 
Of  this  I  had  amusing  evidence  at  an  early  meeting.  A 
vigorous  Radical  and  Secularist  named  Sadler  had  been 
appointed  Secretary  at  the  salary  of  £2  a  week  which  I 
had  offered.  I  had  remained  behind  that  evening,  and 


START   OF  SOCIAL  DEMOCRACY  233 

several  of  the  members  were  going  down  the  stairs  at  the 
Westminster  Palace  Chambers  where  our  offices  were.  I 
overheard,  as  I  came  out  and  followed  them  down,  Sadler 
saying,  "I  don't  believe  in  the  concern  a  bit,  but  when  I 
heard  that  £2  a  week  were  going  about  I  b well  deter- 
mined to  have  some  of  it."  Yet  Sadler  made  a  very  good 
secretary  of  his  kind,  and  he  got  his  £2  a  week  regularly, 
without  ever  knowing  that  I  had  overheard  his  remark  — 
by  no  means  the  only  queer  utterance  I  remember  as  com- 
ing to  my  ears  from  men  who  have  been  supposed  to  be 
earnest  in  the  cause. 

Sadler  went  the  way  of  so  many  English  workers,  when 
they  have  a  secure  place  at  what  they  consider  "a  good 
screw";  but  when  he  became  generally  known  in  London 
as  "two  of  Irish"  it  was  necessary  to  get  rid  of  him.  Sadler 
was  a  basket-maker  by  trade.  Morgan,  one  of  the  old 
Chartists,  was  a  slipper-maker,  a  very  different  class  of  man, 
and,  though  he  never  became  a  thorough  Socialist,  he  under- 
stood his  own  class  and  its  shortcomings  very  well.  Walk- 
ing back  with  him  one  night  accompanied  by  another  mem- 
ber of  the  Executive  of  that  day  named  Butler,  who  was 
little  better  than  an  Anarchist,  the  latter  began  to  talk  of 
the  rack  and  ruin  they  would  wreak  on  the  upper  classes 
when  their  turn  came.  " Would  you?"  said  Morgan; 
"about  that  time  we  should  be  putting  a  provost  marshal's 
guard  at  the  street  corner  where  you  live  with  strict  orders 
to  hang  fellows  like  you."  As  Morgan  was  a  lean  and  lathy 
customer,  very  active  on  his  legs  and  handy  with  his  fists, 
Butler  allowed  this  remark  to  pass  with  a  mild  protest. 
But  Morgan,  who  had  been  a  boatswain  on  board  a  man- 
of-war,  and  a  very  smart  one  too,  could  hold  his  own  in 
other  company.  As  we  made  way,  and  it  began  to  look  as 
if  one  of  those  fine  days  we  might  have  an  active  revolu- 
tionary party  in  London,  an  artillery  officer,  Major  Edwards, 
who  partially  sympathised  with  our  objects,  invited  several 


234     THE  RECORD  OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

of  our  working  men,  including  the  two  Murrays  and  "Bill" 
Morgan,  down  to  Woolwich,  where  he  treated  them  very 
well,  and  showed  them  one  of  the  biggest  guns  from  the 
Arsenal.  "There,"  said  the  Major,  "what  is  the  use  of  you 
fellows  talking  about  fighting  and  coming  to  close  quarters 
with  the  upper  classes?  What  could  you  do  against  a  gun 
like  that?"  "Yes,"  replied  Morgan,  "and  what  should  we 
be  doing  while  you  were  getting  that  plaything  into  posi- 
tion?" Major  Edwards,  of  course,  did  not  know  that 
Morgan  had  had  any  experience  with  pacifist  tools  of 
this  sort. 

During  the  whole  of  1881  the  Irish  question  overshadowed 
all  others,  and  our  organisation,  young  as  it  was,  took  a 
very  active  part  against  Coercion,  and  supported  the  Irish 
cause  to  the  fullest  extent  we  could.  We  sent  a  large  Com- 
mission to  Ireland  to  examine  into  the  land  problem,  and 
to  report  upon  the  action  of  the  Land  League.  I  went 
over  to  Dublin  myself  and  spoke  in  Phoenix  Park  with  two 
quite  admirable  speakers  Winks  and  Sabin,  then  active 
members  of  our  body  but  now  forgotten.  I  joined  the  Irish 
Land  League  which  had  been  started  by  the  famous  Michael 
Davitt,  who  afterwards  became  my  close  and  intimate 
friend,  and  I  served  as  a  member  of  the  Executive  of  the 
Land  League  of  Great  Britain.  The  mention  of  this  last- 
named  organisation  recalls  to  my  mind  a  rather  amusing 
incident.  I  have  generally  been  considered  a  perturbing 
rather  than  a  pacificatory  agent  in  public  affairs  in  Great 
Britain,  and  even  on  the  Continent  of  Europe.  But  among 
Irishmen  my  truly  urbane  disposition  and  peace-loving 
tendencies  were  at  once  appreciated  at  their  real  value. 
So  obvious  was  this  in  the  Council  of  the  Land  League  of 
Great  Britain,  that  I  received  more  than  one  letter  from 
my  friend  Justin  McCarthy,  then  President  of  that  body, 
to  the  following  effect:  "My  dear  Hyndman,  we  expect  to 
have  rough  times  this  evening.  I  hope  you  will  be  able  to 


START   OF  SOCIAL  DEMOCRACY  235 

be  present  in  order  to  throw  oil  upon  the  troubled  waters, 
etc."  I  have  always  felt  that  this  was  an  invaluable  testi- 
mony to  character  coming  from  such  a  quarter.  I  hope 
some  of  my  opponents  will  take  careful  note  of  it. 

One  sitting  of  that  Executive  will  be  always  present  to 
my  memory,  which  occurred  later  but  may  be  mentioned 
here.  Parnell  was  in  Kilmainham  Gaol  and  some  two  or 
three  hundred  of  the  best  men  in  Ireland  were  in  custody 
at  the  same  time.  The  agitation  on  the  land  question  was 
spreading  to  England  and  Scotland,  and  a  "No  Rent77 
manifesto  was  issued.  We  were  about  to  hold  a  big  con- 
joint demonstration  of  Irish  Land  Leaguers  and  English 
Socialists  in  Hyde  Park,  with  Joseph  Cowen,  I  think,  in  the 
chair,  in  order  to  protest  vigorously  against  such  a  mon- 
strous policy  as  that  of  the  Liberal  Party  in  Ireland.  I 
was  strongly  in  favour  of  making  the  "No  Rent7'  agitation 
a  prominent  feature  in  our  pronouncement,  and  I  moved 
that  the  Manifesto  against  Rent  should  be  displayed  and 
read  from  all  the  platforms.  Thereupon  Frank  Byrne  the 
secretary,  who  was,  as  afterwards  appeared,  hand  in  glove 
with  the  extreme  section,  but  acted  most  fairly  as  secretary, 
read  out  a  letter  from  Kilmainham  in  Pamelas  own  hand- 
writing ordering  that  no  such  step  should  be  taken.  The 
more  advanced  men  present  were  not  prepared  to  give  way 
to  this  extraneous  dictation,  and  I  was  quite  determined 
myself  that  my  resolution  should  go  to  the  vote.  The  dis- 
cussion got  warm.  A  hint  that  weapons  were  handy  was 
given.  The  value  of  chair  legs  as  shillelaghs  and  as  aids  to 
debate  presented  itself  to  my  mind.  I  even  looked  hard 
at  the  tumblers  and  water-bottle  on  the  table  and  be- 
thought me  of  the  reflection  Charles  Lever  put  in  the  mouth 
of  one  of  his  favourite  characters:  "A  wine-glass,  my  boy, 
is  useful  on  occasion,  but  a  cut  glass  decanter  well  aimed 
and  low  I  have  seen  do  excellent  service." 

But  —  I  shall  always  declare  the  result  was  due  to  my 


236     THE  RECORD  OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

mollifying  pacifism  —  things  quieted  down,  revolvers  were 
not  drawn,  less  lethal  implements  were  not  brought  into 
play,  voices  resumed  their  melodious  intonation,  and  my 
resolution  in  favour  of  the  "No  Rent"  manifesto  being  pro- 
mulgated in  the  Park  was  put  solemnly  to  the  vote.  It 
was  carried  with  equal  solemnity  —  the  Irish  can  do  these 
things  well  when  they  like  —  and  I  at  once  jumped  up, 
upon  our  majority  being  declared,  and  proposed  that,  in 
order  to  compose  any  possible  differences,  the  decision 
should  be  made  unanimous.  This  was  done,  the  "No  Rent77 
cry  was  raised  in  earnest,  and  Parnell  was  released  within 
three  weeks.  Why?  Parnell  was  not  a  "No  Rent"  man 
by  any  means,  and  he  alone  could  keep  the  advanced  move- 
ment from  becoming  formidable.  I  firmly  believe  that  was 
the  reason  of  his  prompt  release. 

I  never  spoke  to  Parnell  but  once,  and  then  it  was  merely 
as  two  old  Cambridge  men  meeting  by  chance  in  the  offices 
of  the  Irish  Party.  I  confess  he  did  not  produce  upon  me  a 
favourable  impression,  but  that,  of  course,  is  of  no  im- 
portance. What  was  more  to  the  point  was  the  dictatorial 
and  arrogant  attitude  he  assumed  towards  his  supporters. 
It  may  have  been  necessary,  and  the  conduct  of  the  per- 
sons whom  he  dominated  when  living  during  the  quarter  of 
a  century  which  has  passed  since  his  death  looks  as  if  it 
were,  but  it  was  scarcely  pleasant  to  see.  On  one  occasion 
he  was  talking  in  the  large  reception  room  of  the  Land 
League  offices  to  a  member  of  our  organisation  when  per- 
haps the  most  prominent  man  among  his  followers  looked 
in  at  the  door.  On  noticing  Parnell  he  said,  "Oh,  I  beg 
your  pardon,  sir,"  and  out  he  went  without  another  word, 
though  he  had  more  right  in  the  room  than  Parnell  had. 
Yet  that  Parnell  was  a  first-rate  Parliamentary  leader  can- 
not be  doubted,  while  his  strictly  limited  fanaticism  was 
precisely  suited  to  the  times,  which,  I  am  forced  to  admit, 
were  much  less  revolutionary  than  they  looked. 


START  OF  SOCIAL  DEMOCRACY  237 

It  is  strange  now  to  recall  how  very  revolutionary  they 
did  look.  It  seems  incredible,  at  this  time  of  day,  that  a 
Liberal  Government,  headed  by  Mr.  Gladstone  and  com- 
prising such  men  as  the  extreme  Radical  Mr.  Chamberlain 
then  was,  Sir  Charles  Dilke,  Mr.  Henry  Fawcett,  and  others, 
with  a  strong  Radical  party  behind  them  numbering  some 
one  hundred  and  thirty  strong,  should  have  been  engaged 
in  putting  down  in  Ireland,  by  sheer  force  of  arms  and 
police  brutality  and  buckshot,  those  ordinary  common- 
place liberties  which  on  this  side  of  the  Channel  are  re- 
garded, too  laxly,  as  beyond  even  Whig  interference;  and 
that  this  should  have  been  done  in  the  interest  of  one  of 
the  worst  land-owning  classes  that  ever  preyed  upon  a  com- 
munity, whose  outrageous  proceedings  that  very  same 
Government  had  vainly  attempted  to  check.  It  was  an 
extraordinary  position.  Everybody  admitted  that  Ireland 
had  been  badly  governed  and  that  some  change  ought  to 
be  made.  Even  Lord  Beaconsfield  spoke  of  the  need  for  a 
revolution  by  legislation.  But,  as  usual  with  English 
affairs,  reforms  were  postponed  until  revolution  was  knock- 
ing hard  at  the  door.  Even  those  who  lived  through  the 
period  can  scarcely  think  themselves  back  into  the  days 
when  a  dynamite  explosion  was  organised  in  the  House  of 
Commons,  when  Victoria  Station  was  nearly  blown  to  pieces 
by  clockwork  bombs  left  in  the  cloak-room,  —  my  wife 
and  I  slept  that  night  close  by,  and  were  roused  and  shaken 
by  the  shock,  —  when  a  serious  attempt  to  wreck  London 
Bridge  was  only  averted  by  the  two  dynamiters  entrusted 
with  the  task  blowing  themselves  up  in  their  boat  instead 
of  the  bridge,  and  when  grave  apprehensions  were  enter- 
tained as  to  the  safety  of  Westminster  Abbey.  Dean 
Stanley,  whom  I  met  at  dinner  while  all  this  was  going  on, 
seemed  quite  relieved,  in  his  courtly  way,  when  he  dis- 
covered that  I,  a  pronounced  Home  Ruler  and  Land  League 
member,  had  no  sympathy  whatever  with  the  desperadoes 


238     THE  RECORD  OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

who  were  reported  to  be  plotting  the  destruction  of  his 
cherished  cathedral. 

Party  feeling  naturally  ran  very  high  indeed.  Ladies  of 
high  position  who  not  long  before  had  listened  with  pleas- 
ure to  the  charming  conversation  of  Mr.  Justin  McCarthy 
drew  away  from  him  as  if  from  contamination  in  a  drawing- 
room,  and  he  himself  said  to  me:  "It  is  a  terrible  work, 
Hyndman,  going  on  night  after  night  in  the  House  of  Com- 
mons with  the  whole  Assembly  bitterly  against  you.  At 
times  it  is  most  depressing,  and  nothing  but  the  profound 
conviction  of  the  justice  of  our  cause  keeps  me  up  against 
the  furious  attacks  and  howlings  of  the  overwhelming 
majority  of  the  members."  When,  also,  Mr.  Gladstone 
declared  in  the  Guildhall  that  he  had  sent  Mr.  Parnell  to 
prison  for  his  treasonable  efforts,  any  stranger  would  have 
imagined,  from  the  enthusiasm  with  which  his  announce- 
ment was  acclaimed,  that  some  great  triumph  of  justice  and 
right  had  been  achieved. 

It  was  during  this  period  of  storm  and  strife,  also,  that 
the  surgical  knives  afterwards  used  in  the  Phoenix  Park 
assassinations  of  Mr.  Burke  and  Lord  Frederick  Cavendish 
were  kept  concealed  in  the  offices  of  the  Land  League  and 
the  Irish  Parliamentary  Party  by  Mr.  Frank  Byrne,  the 
secretary  spoken  of  above.  I  think  a  good  many  of  the 
" respectable"  people  and  comfortable  Parliament  men  of 
the  Irish  Party  who  then  frequented  the  handsome  rooms 
in  Westminster  Palace  Chambers,  would  have  felt  a  little 
ill  at  ease  had  they  known  that  these  ugly  implements 
were  so  close  to  them,  that  their  trusted  secretary  held 
them  in  safe  custody,  and  that  the  wife  of  that  official 
conveyed  them  to  Dublin  for  use  on  the  fatal  day.  Assassi- 
nation is  a  nasty  form  of  protest  against  tyranny,  and  it  is 
not  always  used  with  the  greatest  discrimination  as  to  the 
persons  removed.  The  death  of  Mr.  Burke  and  particularly 
of  Lord  Frederick  Cavendish,  naturally  roused  a  great  deal 


START   OF  SOCIAL  DEMOCRACY  239 

of  indignation,  especially  among  those  whose  tyrannical 
methods  had  been  the  cause  of  their  taking-off.  Then 
came  the  treachery  of  Carey,  who  betrayed  all  his  accom- 
plices, but  whose  one  good  action  was  that  he  swore  he  did 
not  recognise  Mrs.  Frank  Byrne,  who  herself  gave  him  the 
knives,  when  she  appeared  in  the  witness-box. 

But  a  more  tremendous  revenge  than  any  of  these  had 
been  prepared,  and  but  for  an  accident  would  have  been 
carried  out.  I  am  very  glad  it  wasn't;  for  the  reaction  it 
would  have  occasioned  might  easily  have  led  to  a  sort  of 
White  Terror,  both  in  this  country  and  in  Ireland.  This 
conspiracy  was  to  place  a  number  of  men  with  bombs  in 
the  gallery  of  the  House  of  Commons,  then  much  more  easy 
of  access  than  it  is  to-day,  these  desperadoes  being  backed 
up  by  another  set  of  equally  determined  persons  in  the 
lobby  below.  The  set  in  the  gallery  having  thrown  their 
bombs,  with  judicious  political  impartiality,  at  both  the 
front  benches,  were  to  rush  down  and  out  as  fast  as  they 
could,  while  their  fellow-conspirators  took  up  the  tale  of 
slaughter  by  crowding  on  to  the  floor  of  the  House  and 
shooting  with  revolvers  all  who  had  not  been  already  de- 
spatched or  intimidated  by  the  bomb  explosions. 

Happily  the  man  who  held  the  key  of  the  entire  plot 
drank  a  trifle  more  than  was  good  for  him  the  night  before, 
lost  his  nerve  at  the  last  moment,  and  failed  to  call  the 
sworn  band  of  assailants  together.  So  the  thing  fell  through, 
and  the  plot  was  never  renewed.  Quite  possibly  it  may  be 
denied  that  any  such  terrible  scheme  was  ever  set  on  foot, 
now  that  a  quarter  of  a  century's  undisturbed  residence  in 
London  has  rendered  some  of  the  active  members  of  the 
conspiracy  quite  constitutional  persons.  But  the  facts  are 
as  I  state  them,  and  the  names  of  not  a  few  of  those  who 
were  to  take  part  in  the  attack  are  known  to  me.  As  a 
matter  of  fact,  and  to  my  certain  knowledge,  at  least  two 
of  the  best  known  sympathisers  with  Ireland  in  the  House 


240  THE  RECORD   OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

of  Commons,  who  were  privately  and  solemnly  warned  not 
to  be  in  their  places  on  that  particular  night,  refrained  from 
going,  in  view  of  the  quarter  from  which  the  intimation  of 
danger  came,  and  even  went  so  far  as  to  notify  members  of 
the  Government  that  something  very  serious  was  on  foot. 
And  all  this  occurred  less  than  thirty  years  ago  !  Similar 
policy  from  above  is  producing  similar  revolt  from  below  in 
India  at  this  present  time. 

Strange  to  say,  I  saw  the  news  of  Carey's  treachery  as 
informer  displayed  on  the  placards  of  the  evening  news- 
papers as  I  went  into  Earl's  Court  Station,  after  having 
visited  my  old  friend  Colonel  Yule  in  Pen-y-Wern  Road 
hard  by,  with  Tchaikovsky  the  Russian  Anarchist.  We 
had  gone  to  Yule  in  order  to  obtain  his  signature  to  a  Me- 
morial to  the  French  Government  I  was  using  my  best 
endeavours  to  get  signed  in  favour  of  giving  Kropotkin, 
then  imprisoned  at  Clairvaux  for  complicity  in  Anarchist 
plots,  better  accommodation,  and  the  right  to  see  his  wife. 
The  names  appended  to  that  Memorial  were  those  of  some 
of  the  most  distinguished  men  of  science  and  men  of  letters 
in  the  country,  which  I  think  did  them  great  credit;  for 
Kropotkin  was  far  better  known  at  that  time  as  a  vehement 
advocate  of  "the  propaganda-of-deed"  than  as  a  geographer 
or  a  litterateur.  The  man  who  refused  most  positively  to 
lend  any  help  at  all  was,  as  it  happened,  Thomas  Huxley, 
who  gave  it  as  his  opinion  that  Kropotkin  was  already  too 
well  off  as  he  was.  I  was  rather  surprised  at  this  from 
Huxley;  but  fortunately  the  lack  of  his  signature  made  no 
difference,  and  Kropotkin  was  accorded  by  the  French 
Ministry  that  amelioration  of  his  prison  discipline  for  which 
the  English  Memorial  asked. 

I  had  previously  made  Prince  Kropotkin's  acquaintance 
and  friendship  upon  an  introduction  from  Joseph  Cowen, 
that  consistent  friend  of  the  revolutionists  and  subver- 
sionists  in  every  country  but  (in  later  years)  his  own.  As 


START   OF  SOCIAL  DEMOCRACY  241 

said,  Kropotkin,  in  those  days,  was  an  out-and-out  direct 
action  Anarchist.  He  was  overflowing  with  enthusiasm  and 
vigour.  When  he  came  to  our  house  I  was  at  once  cap- 
tivated by  the  charm  of  his  manner  and  the  unaffected 
sincerity  of  his  tone.  His  appearance  was  to  me  what  I 
then  thought  was  typically  Russian,  a  bright  engaging  face, 
in  spite  of  its  irregular  features  and  nose  of  the  Kahmack 
type,  lightly  brushed  long  hair,  and  heavy  beard  and  mous- 
tache. At  first  I  tried  to  argue  with  him  about  his  Anarchist 
opinions,  which  seemed  to  me  entirely  out  of  accord  with  his 
intelligence  and  naturally  charming  disposition.  I  found 
this  was  quite  hopeless.  You  could  pin  him  to  nothing, 
and  his  capacity  for  genial  misrepresentation  of  Social- 
Democratic  thought  and  principle  and  argument  tran- 
scended belief.  But  I  tried  hard,  nevertheless,  for  a  time 
to  convince  him  that  no  society  of  any  kind  could  dispense 
with  leadership  and  authority  of  some  sort,  voluntarily  con- 
stituted and  freely  submitted  to. 

According  to  Kropotkin,  however,  each  commune,  each 
individual,  could  be  bound  by  nothing,  and  nobody  and 
no  number  of  people  could,  under  any  circumstances,  be 
overruled  in  their  individual  rights,  no  matter  how  many 
thousands  or  even  millions  of  people  might  be  permanently 
injured  or  starved  by  their  recusancy.  As  to  existing  social 
relations,  Kropotkin  took  the  view  of  Bakunin  that  any 
action  was  not  only  justifiable  but  imperatively  necessary 
which  the  individual  himself  judged  to  be  calculated  to 
terrorise  or  shake  the  horrible  society  of  to-day.  These 
opinions  Kropotkin  expressed  freely,  not  only  in  private 
conversation  but  in  his  journal  Le  Revolte.  And,  notwith- 
standing his  pleasing  character  and  humane  disposition, 
there  can  be  no  doubt  that  at  that  period  he  was  quite 
serious  in  these  beliefs,  and  wholly  devoted  to  his  propa- 
ganda. He  could  not  also  detect  any  incompatibility  with 
his  theories  in  his  own  conduct  as  Editor  of  his  paper.  I 


242     THE  RECORD  OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

asked  him  one  day  who  appointed  him  Editor?  He  looked 
puzzled  but  answered,  "I  did  myself,  of  course."  "Do 
you,"  I  asked,  "  print  all  the  contributions  and  letters 
which  come  to  you,  in  agreement  with,  or  in  protest  against, 
your  own  ideas?"  "Certainly  not,"  was  the  reply;  "it 
would  be  utterly  impossible  to  do  so."  "But  who  then 
decides,"  I  went  on,  "as  to  what  should  be  put  in  and  what 
should  be  kept  out?"  "Why,  I  do:  I  am  the  Editor." 
"There  is  no  appeal  from  your  judgment?"  "Of  course 
not.  How  could  there  be?"  "Then,  Kropotkin,"  I  wound 
up,  "let  me  tell  you  you  are  no  better  than  a  tyrannical 
journalistic  Czar,  and  some  day  we  shall  hear  of  your  'bomb- 
ing off7  by  one  or  other  of  the  high-souled  comrades  whose 
lucubrations  you  have  so  despotically  suppressed." 

On  another  occasion  we  argued  the  matter  of  railways. 
"Do  you  seriously  contend,"  I  urged,  "that  if  it  were  of  the 
greatest  importance  to  construct  a  railway  between  two 
large  and  populous  centres  of  industry,  and  the  direct  route 
lay  through  the  land  of  a  commune  peopled  by,  say,  a  hun- 
dred persons,  and  that  any  other  line  would  necessitate  a 
detour  of  a  couple  of  hundred  miles,  thus  entailing  enormous 
additional  expense  at  the  outset  and  the  permanent  daily 
cost  of  200  miles  of  extra  transport,  you  would  consider  that 
the  two  great  cities  ought  to  be  held  up  and  prevented  from 
building  this  railroad  because  this  handful  of  peasants 
objected?"  "Oh,  but  they  wouldn't  object."  "Yes,  but 
if  they  did,  how  then?"  And  so  we  went  on,  Kropotkin 
admitting  in  the  end  that  he  would  religiously  respect  the 
rights  of  this  inconspicuous  minority  to  obstruct  progress, 
At  a  public  meeting  where  one  of  our  Social-Democratic 
comrades  raised  the  same  question  about  the  railroad,  and 
persisted  in  having  a  plain  answer,  it  has  always  been 
stated  that  Kropotkin,  nettled  at  the  heckling  he  experi- 
enced, closed  the  discussion  amid  shouts  of  laughter  by 
saying,  "Damn  the  railroad  !" 


START   OF  SOCIAL  DEMOCRACY  243 

A  much  more  serious  objection  to  Kropotkin  and  other 
Anarchists  is  their  wholly  unscrupulous  habit  of  reiterating 
statements  that  have  been  repeatedly  proved  to  be  incor- 
rect, and  even  outrageous,  by  the  men  and  women  to  whom 
they  are  attributed.  Time  after  time  I  have  told  Kropot- 
kin, time  after  time  has  he  read  it  in  print,  that  Social- 
Democrats  work  for  the  complete  overthrow  of  the  wages 
system.  He  has  admitted  this  to  be  so.  But  a  month  or 
so  afterwards  the  same  old  oft-refuted  misrepresentation 
appears  in  the  same  old  authoritative  fashion,  as  if  no  refu- 
tation of  the  calumny,  that  we  wish  to  maintain  wage- 
slavery,  had  ever  been  made.  There  is  evidently,  as  we 
might  expect  from  their  doctrines,  a  close  community  of 
sentiment  and  method  between  Anarchists  and  Liberals. 

Not  only  do  they  both  consider  that  the  grossest  mis- 
representation and  disregard  for  truth  is  quite  allowable 
against  an  adversary,  but,  strange  as  it  may  appear,  Anar- 
chist after  Anarchist,  attracted  by  this  similarity  of  senti- 
ment and  method,  turns  Liberal.  The  very  last  time  I  met 
Kropotkin  he  bitterly  reproached  me  and  Social-Democrats 
generally  for  our  opposition  to  the  Capitalist-Liberal  party 
and  its  special  organ  the  Daily  News.  It  is  very  odd  indeed, 
but  nearly  all  the  extreme  Anarchists  whom  I  have  known 
have  gone  off  sooner  or  later  in  the  same  direction.  Nor 
is  this  confined  to  foreigners  resident  in  Great  Britain,  who 
become  so  imbued  with  admiration  for  our  seductive  pseudo- 
freedoms  that  they  think  Englishmen  have  only  themselves 
to  blame  for  their  economic  and  social  subjection,  but  native 
English  Anarchists  go  off  in  the  same  way  and  show  a  like 
tendency  towards  the  most  hypocritical  and  offensive  forms 
of  Capitalist-Liberalism. 

Abroad  it  is  the  same.  I  knew  Aristide  Briand  at  one 
time  pretty  well.  He  was  then  an  even  more  ferocious 
and  a  much  less  urbane  Anarchist  and  Subversionist  than 
Kropotkin.  At  International  Congresses,  as  Secretary  and 


244     THE  RECORD  OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

Boss  of  the  anarchistic  and  general  strike  elements  of 
French  Trade  Unionism,  the  man  made  himself  a  perfect 
nuisance,  upsetting  the  proceedings  systematically  and 
insisting  upon  having  far  more  than  his  share  of  the  talk  — 
an  ill-conditioned,  overbearing,  self-idolising  creature:  that 
was  the  impression  which  the  vehement  propaganda-of- 
deed  Anarchist  Briand  made  upon  all  who  met  him  at 
these  Congresses.  And  I  believe  at  the  time  he  meant  it 
all.  He  was  a  thorough-going  individualist,  eager  to  fight 
for  complete  freedom  of  the  individual  as  a  step  to  social 
freedom,  and  had  not  the  slightest  regard  for  principle,  or 
for  the  opinion  of  anybody  but  himself.  Yet  he  has  been 
Prime  Minister  of  France,  having  applied  his  individual- 
ist principles,  on  Capitalist-Liberal  lines,  wholly  and  solely 
to  his  own  personal  advancement.  Evidently  a  natural 
process  of  evolution  in  his  entire  disregard  for  others  and 
religious  worship  of  himself. 

Kropotkin,  of  course,  has  never  thus  carried  his  change 
or  modification  into  practical  life.  On  the  contrary,  he 
has  in  this  respect  remained  throughout  quite  true  to  his 
principles,  such  as  they  are,  and  has  refused  to  benefit 
himself  personally  in  any  way  whatever,  even  when  he  might 
have  done  so  without  reproach.  That  is  why,  notwith- 
standing his  pro-Liberal  attitude  in  England,  his  outrageous 
travesty  of  Social-Democracy,  and  his  rather  amusing  per- 
versions of  natural  history  to  support  his  own  peculiar 
views,  Kropotkin  has  never  forfeited  the  esteem  and  good- 
will of  his  opponents  in  the  movement;  while  on  the  plat- 
form and  in  private  life  his  popularity  has  been  well  earned 
by  his  never-failing  good  temper  under  all  circumstances. 

But  the  movement  owes  him  more  than  this.  In  my 
opinion  Kropotkin's  Aux  Jeunes  Gens,  which  I  trans- 
lated into  English  under  the  title  of  An  Appeal  to  the 
Young,  and  which  in  that  shape  has  been  distributed  far 
and  wide  in  all  English-speaking  countries,  is  the  best 


START   OF  SOCIAL  DEMOCRACY  245 

propagandist  pamphlet  that  ever  was  penned.  Even  to-day 
I  can  read  it  again  with  pleasure.  The  thing  is  a  master- 
piece, alike  in  conception  and  execution.  Nothing  ever 
written  so  completely  combines  the  scientific  with  the 
popular,  the  revolutionary  with  the  ethical.  Anarchist  in 
sentiment,  here  and  there,  it  may  be;  but  all  sectional 
differences  are  merged  and  carried  away  in  the  broad  sweep 
of  its  universal  sympathy  for  down-trodden  humanity,  and 
its  adjurations  to  men  and  women  of  all  classes  to  combine 
for  the  attainment  of  a  life  worthy  of  what  mankind  under 
Socialism  may  and  will  be.  At  one  time  we  saw  a  good  deal 
of  Kropotkin,  his  wife,  and  daughter,  and  I  introduced  him 
to  the  late  Sir  James  Knowles  of  the  Nineteenth  Century, 
for  which  periodical  he  has  done  most  of  his  writing  in 
English.  Of  late  years  we  have  met  seldom,  but,  notwith- 
standing very  sharp  differences  of  opinion,  our  cordial 
friendship  and  good  feeling  remain. 


CHAPTER  XVI 

KARL  MARX 

IT  was  natural  as  I  drove  with  Karl  Hirsch  to  make  the 
acquaintance  of  Karl  Marx  in  his  modest  dwelling  on 
Haverstock  Hill  that  my  mind  should  go  back  to  the  visit  I 
paid  to  Mazzini  in  the  Fulham  Road  years  before.  Different 
and  even  antagonistic  as  the  two  men  were  in  many  respects, 
and  bitter  as  was  their  struggle  for  control  in  the  "  Inter- 
national," when  Marx  was  in  the  long  run  completely  suc- 
cessful, they  were  alike  in  that  they  both  had  given  up  their 
lives  entirely  to  an  ideal,  had  remained  in  poor  circumstances 
when  power  and  ease  and  comfort  were  at  their  disposal  and 
had  exercised  a  personal  and  intellectual  effect  on  the 
youth  of  their  generation  quite  unequalled,  I  think,  by  any 
two  other  men  of  their  time. 

That  Marx's  was  far  the  more  powerful  mind  cannot  be 
disputed.  Writing  now  more  than  a  quarter  of  a  century 
after  his  death,  it  is  clear  to  all  the  world  not  only  that  his 
analysis  of  the  capitalist  system  of  production  stands  alone, 
as  the  sole  exhaustive  work  on  the  subject  in  existence, 
but  that  his  theories  in  regard  to  the  materialist  basis  of 
history  are  steadily  supplanting  in  the  main  all  other  views 
and  that  his  general  influence  is  increasing  every  day.  In 
fact,  no  economic  or  sociologic  contributions  to  the  science 
of  human  development  can  be  complete  at  the  present  time 
without  taking  full  account  of  Marx's  profound  investiga- 
tions. Mazzini,  on  the  other  hand,  who  during  his  life 
enjoyed  a  far  greater  popular  reputation,  has  ceased  to 
produce  any  vivifying  effect  on  current  thought.  Having 

246 


KARL  MARX  247 

known  both  men  well  I  should  say.  that  while  Mazzini's 
influence  on  those  around  him  was  personal  and  individually 
ethical,  Marx's  was  almost  wholly  intellectual  and  scientific. 
I  should  not  venture,  however,  to  compare  two  great  men 
of  such  widely-different  personalities  and  race  so  long  after 
death  had  they  not  been  actual  rivals  during  life.  My 
own  view  is  that  I  approached  Mazzini  with  admiration  for 
his  character  and  remained  devoted  to  him  for  his  eleva- 
tion of  thought  and  conduct,  and  that  I  went  to  Marx  com- 
pelled to  recognise  a  supreme  analytic  genius  and  eager  to 
learn  as  a  student. 

And  so  I  found  myself  with  Hirsch  at  41  Maitland  Park 
Road  and,  ushered  in  by  their  old  and  trusty  servant,  saw 
Marx  in  the  large  room,  on  the  first  floor  facing  the  gardens, 
which  he  used  as  his  study.  I  wonder  whether  any  great 
man  fully  bears  out  the  conception  you  have  formed  of  him 
before  meeting  him.  I  presume  not.  The  first  impression 
of  Marx  as  I  saw  him  was  that  of  a  powerful,  shaggy,  un- 

',  tamed  old  man,  ready,  not  to  say  eager,  to  enter  into  con- 
flict and  rather  suspicious  himself  of  immediate  attack. 
Yet  his  greeting  to  us  was  cordial  and  his  first  remarks  to 
me,  after  I  had  told  him  what  a  great  pleasure  and  honour 
I  felt  it  to  be  to  shake  hands  with  the  author  of  the  Capital, 
were  agreeable  enough;  for  he  told  me  he  had  read  my 
articles  on  India  with  pleasure  and  had  commented  on  them 
favourably  in  his  newspaper  correspondence.  We  were 
with  him  at  that  xtime  for  fully  two  hours  and  it  did  not 
take  me  long  to  appreciate  that  Marx's  conversation  was 
quite  on  a  level  with  his  writing. 

When  speaking  with  fierce  indignation  of  the  policy  of 
the  Liberal  Party,  especially  in  regard  to  Ireland,  the  old 
warrior's  small  deep-sunk  eyes  lighted  up,  his  heavy  brows 
wrinkled,  the  board,  strong  nose  and  face  were  obviously 
moved  by  passion,  and  he  poured  out  a  stream  of  vigorous 

-  denunciation,  which  displayed  alike  the  heat  of  his  tern- 


248  THE  RECORD   OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

perament  and  the  marvellous  command  he  possessed  over 
our  language.  The  contrast  between  his  manner  and 
utterance  when  thus  deeply  stirred  by  anger  and  his  atti- 
tude when  giving  his  views  on  the  economic  events  of  the 
period  was  very  marked.  He  turned  from  the  role  of 
prophet  and  vehement  denunciator  to  that  of  the  calm 
philosopher  without  any  apparent  effort,  and  I  felt  from  the 
first  that  on  this  latter  ground  many  a  long  year  might  pass 
before  I  ceased  to  be  a  student  in  the  presence  of  a  master. 

I  had  been  surprised  in  reading  the  Capital  and  still  more 
when  perusing  his  smaller  works,  such  as  his  pronouncement 
on  the  Commune  of  Paris  and  his  "XVIIIth  Brumaire," 
how  he  combined  the  ablest  and  coolest  examination  of 
economic  causes  and  social  effects  with  the  most  bitter 
hatred  of  classes  and  even  of  individual  men  such  as  Na- 
poleon III.  and  M.  Thiers,  who,  according  to  his  own  theories, 
were  little  more  than  flies  upon  the  wheels  of  the  great 
Juggernaut  car  of  capitalist  development.  Marx,  of  course, 
was  a  Jew,  and  to  me  it  seemed  that  he  combined  in  his 
own  person  and  nature,  with  his  commanding  forehead  and 
great  overhanging  brow,  his  fierce  glittering  eyes,  broad 
sensitive  nose  and  mobile  mouth,  all  surrounded  by  a  set- 
ting of  untrimmed  hair  and  beard,  the  righteous  fury  of 
the  great  seers  of  his  race,  with  the  cold  analytical  powers 
of  Spinoza  and  the  Jewish  doctors.  It  was  an  extraordinary 
combination  of  qualities,  the  like  of  which  I  have  known 
in  no  other  man. 

As  I  went  out  with  Hirsch  deeply  impressed  by  the  great 
personality  we  had  left,  Hirsch  asked  me  what  I  thought 
of  him.  "Well,"  I  replied,  "I  think  he  is  the  Aristotle  of 
the  Nineteenth  Century."  And  yet  as  I  said  it  I  knew 
that  this  did  not  cover  the  ground.  For  one  thing  it  was 
quite  impossible  to  think  of  Marx  as  acting  the  courtier  to 
Alexander  while  carrying  on  the  profound  studies  which 
have  so  deeply  influenced  later  generations,  and  besides  he 


KARL  MARX  249 

never  so  wholly  segregated  himself  from  immediate  human 
interests  —  notwithstanding  much  that  has  been  said  to  the 
contrary  —  as  to  be  able  to  consider  facts  and  their  sur- 
roundings in  the  cold  hard  light  of  the  greatest  philosopher 
of  antiquity.     There  can  be  no  doubt  whatever  that  his 
I  hatred  of  the  system  of  exploitation  and  wage-slavery  by 
I  which  he   was  surrounded   was  not  only  intellectual   and 
philosophic  but  bitterly  personal. 

I  remember  saying  to  him  once  that  as  I  grew  older  I 
j  thought   I    became    more    tolerant.     "Do   you/7    he    said, 
,    "do  you?"     It  was  quite  certain  he  didn't.     It  has  been, 
I  I  think,   Marx's  deep   animosity  to  the  existing  order  of 
I  things  and  his  scathing  criticism  of  his  opponents  which  has 
prevented    many    of   the    educated    well-to-do    class    from 
appreciating  his  masterly  life-work  at  its  full  value,   and 
has    rendered    third-rate    sciolists    and    logomachers,    like 
Bohm-Bawerk,  such  heroes  in  their  eyes,  merely  because 
they  have  misrepresented  and  attempted  to  "refute"  him. 
Accustomed  as  we  are  nowadays,  especially  in  England,  to 
fence  always  with  big  soft  buttons  on  the  point  of  our 
rapiers,  Marx's  terrible  onslaughts  with  naked  steel  upon 
his  adversaries  appeared  so  improper  that  it  was  impossible 
for  our  gentlemanly  sham-fighters  and  mental  gymnasium 
men   to   believe   that   this   unsparing   controversialist   and 
furious  assailant  of  capital  and  capitalists  was  really  the 
deepest  thinker  of  modern  times.     A  very  superficial  ac- 
quaintance with  the  controversial  writings  of  Thomas  More 
or  John  Milton  would  have  enabled  them  to  understand 
Marx  from  this  point  of  view  a  great  deal  better.     He  was 
fighting  to  a  finish  all  through  his  life,  and  that  finish  will 
be  protracted,  I  venture  to  predict,  until  his  greatness  is 
'  universally  recognised. 

But  in  1880  it  is  scarcely  too  much  to  say  that  Marx 

i   was  practically  unknown  to  the  English  public,  except  as  a 

dangerous    and    even    desperate    advocate    of    revolution, 


250  THE  RECORD   OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

whose  organisation  of  the  "  International "  had  been  one  of 
the  causes  of  the  horrible  Commune  of  Paris,  at  which  all 
decent  respectable  people  shuddered  and  thought  of  with 
horror.  Very  few  well-known  Englishmen  ever  saw  him, 
and  of  those  who  were  well  acquainted  with  him;  I  think 
my  old  friend  Professor  Beesly  is  the  only  one  whose  name 
would  be  generally  recognised  as  that  of  a  leader  of  opinion. 
I  consider  myself  fortunate,  therefore,  that  I  was  at  this 
time  able  to  get  to  know  him  as  well  as  I  did. 

Marx's  health  was  now  failing.  His  more  thaa  Herculean 
labours  on  his  great  book  had  sapped  his  marvellously 
strong  constitution.  No  wonder.  He  would  be  at  the 
British  Museum  when  the  doors  opened  in  the  morning  and 
would  leave  only  when  they  closed  at  night.  Then,  after 
his  return  home,  he  would  again  work  on,  giving  himself 
only  a  short  rest  and  time  for  food,  until  the  early  hours  of 
the  morning.  Sixteen  hours  a  day  was  quite  an  ordinary 
day's  work  for  him,  and  not  unfrequently  he  put  in  an 
hour  or  two  more.  And  such  work  as  it  was  too !  It  was 
not  surprising  that  he  was  now  forbidden  to  do  any  writing 
or  thinking  after  his  evening  meal.  This  was  a  serious 
privation  to  him  but  it  gave  me  for  a  few  months  the  oppor- 
tunity of  calling  upon  him,  when  I  knew  he  would  be  dis- 
engaged, and  of  learning  from  him  more  directly  and  more 
personally  than  I  could  have  done  in  any  other  way.  Thus 
it  came  about  that,  at  the  close  of  1880  and  the  beginning 
of  1881,  I  had  the  advantage  of  very  frequent  conversations 
with  the  Doctor,  and  gained  a  view  of  himself  and  his 
genius,  his  vast  erudition  and  his  masterly  survey  of  human 
life  which  I  think  was  accessible  to  very  few  outside  his 
immediate  family  circle. 

Our  method  of  talking  was  peculiar.  Marx  had  a  habit 
when  at  all  interested  in  the  discussion  of  walking  actively 
up  and  down  the  room,  as  if  he  were  pacing  the  deck  of  a 
schooner  for  exercise.  I  had  acquired,  on  my  long  voyages, 


KARL  MARX  251 

the  same  tendency  to  pacing  to  and  fro  when  my  mind  was 
much  occupied.  Consequently,  master  and  student  could 
have  been  seen  walking  up  and  down  on  opposite  sides  of 
the  table  for  two  or  three  hours  in  succession,  engaged  in 
discussing  the  affairs  of  the  past  and  the  present.  I  fre- 
quently spoke  with  him  about  the  Chartist  movement, 
whose  leaders  he  had  known  well  and  by  whom,  as  their 
writings  show,  he  was  greatly  esteemed.  He  was  entirely 
sympathetic  with  my  idea  of  reviving  the  Chartist  organi- 
sation, but  doubted  its  possibility;  and  when  speaking  of 
the  likelihood  of  bringing  about  a  great  economic  and  social 
transformation  in  Great  Britain  politically  and  peacefully 
he  said:  " England  is  the  one  country  in  which  a  peaceful 
revolution  is  possible;  but/7  he  added  after  a  pause,  "his- 
tory does  not  tell  us  so.77  "You  English/7  he  said  on  an- 
other occasion,  "like  the  Romans  in  many  things  are  most 
like  them  in  your  ignorance  of  your  own  history.77 

Great  improvements  have  been  made  in  this  respect  since 
Marx  uttered  this  dictum;  but  even  now  it  is  humiliating 
to  compare  a  clever  educated  Englishman7s  knowledge  of 
the  history  of  his  country  with  the  knowledge  which  nearly 
all  Irishmen  have  of  the  history  of  Ireland. 

On  the  Eastern  Question  Marx  was  anti-Russian  to  the 
highest  degree.  This  constituted  a  link  between  us.  He 
regarded  Russia  under  Czardom  as  inevitably  the  great  sup- 
port of  reaction  all  over  Europe,  as  she  had  been  in  1848, 
and  he  could  not  understand  how  was  it  possible  for  any 
considerable  portion  of  the  people  of  this  island,  apart  from 
the  politicians,  to  regard  the  increase  of  Muscovite  power 
and  influence  as  other  than  a  serious  danger  to  Western 
civilisation.  He  carried  this  justifiable  antagonism,  uncon- 
sciously intensified  maybe  by  his  hereditary  begettings  and 
belongings  and  the  atrocious  treatment  of  his  race  in  Russia, 
to  an  abnormal  extent,  and  even  accepted  David  Urquhart7s 
views  on  the  East  with  a  lack  of  direct  investigation  that 


252  THE  RECORD   OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

surprised  me  in  a  man  of  so  critical  a  mind.  But  all  must 
be  weak  somewhere,  and  the  weaknesses  of  this  great 
thinker  lay  in  his  judgment  of  current  events  and  practical 
measures,  as  well  as  in  his  estimate  of  men. 

The  exquisitely  funny  mistakes  made  by  himself  and 
Engels  during  the  most  successful  period  of  the  "Inter- 
national/' and  their  singularly  autocratic  view  as  to  the 
rightful  management  of  what  was  supposed  to  be  a  demo- 
cratic body,  have  never  been  fully  recorded.  Members  of 
the  "  International,"  such  as  Hermann  Jung,  Adolphe 
Smith,  Cremer,  Vesinier,  and  others,  have  had  too  much 
respect  for  the  magnificent  work  done  by  these  men  in  the 
domain  of  theory  to  enlarge  upon  their  defects  or  short- 
comings in  the  region  of  practice.  Those,  however,  who 
were  behind  the  scenes  and  knew  all  that  was  going  on 
might  reasonably  wonder  how  so  strangely-composed  a  set 
of  people  should  ever  have  had  the  influence  and  exercised 
the  terrorising  effect  on  society  that  at  one  period  the  " In- 
ternational" unquestionably  did.  The  ideas  were  sound 
enough  and  the  very  possibility  of  their  being  accepted  by 
the  people  occasioned  the  alarm.  Marx,  as  has  been  wittily 
said,  introduced  the  great  industry  into  the  field  of  inter- 
national social  revolution.  But  nearly  fifty  years  later  that 
system  is  scarcely  yet  an  actual  fact. 

As  to  his  judgment  of  men,  it  is  enough  to  say  that  he 
was  too  tolerant  in  his  estimates  on  one  side  and  too  bitter 
on  the  other.  Whilst  even  in  the  affairs  of  Germany  he 
and  Engels  opposed  Liebknecht's  policy  of  conciliation  and 
consolidation  with  the  Lassalle  Party,  when  this  was  abso- 
lutely essential  to  the  success  of  our  movement  in  that 
country.  It  only  shows  what  marvellous  and  unforgettable 
(  services  he  rendered  to  the  cause  of  humanity  and  Socialism 
that  all  these  minor  errors  have  faded  from  memory,  and 
only  his  splendid  work  in  political  economy,  history  and 
internationalism  is  remembered. 


KARL  MARX  253 

I  asked  him  once  how  the  conception  of  social  surplus 
<  value  and  the  social  basis  of  exchange  in  social  labour  value 
:  occurred  to  him.     He  told  me  that  the  whole  idea  came 
upon  him,  as  he  was  studying  in  Paris,  like  a  flash,  and  that 
he  believed  the  illuminating  notion  of  the  social  economic 
forces  of  the  time,  working  themselves  out  quite  uncon- 
sciously  and   uncontrolled   into   monopoly   and   Socialism, 
•  beneath  the  anarchist  competitions  and  antagonisms  of  the 
capitalist  system,  first  arose  in  a  co-ordinated  shape  from  his 
I  perusal   of  the   works   of   the   early   English   Economists, 
I  Socialists,    and    Chartists.     The    conception    once    clearly 
formed  in  his  mind  and  the  materialist  view  of  the  develop- 
ment of  history  thoroughly  grasped   and  verified,  all  the 
rest  became  merely  a  matter  of  the  exposition  of  the  theory 
and  the  piecing  together  of  facts  in  accordance  with,  or  in 
apparent  opposition  to,  that  theory.     It  is  a  great  mistake 
to  imagine  that  Marx  had  any  desire  to  belittle  his  obliga- 
tions to  his  predecessors,  or  to  deprive  them  of  any  credit 
,  that  was  their  due.     He  himself  called  my   attention  to 
books  and  pamphlets,  other  than  those  cited  by  himself  in 
'  his  works,  which  proved  that  the  revolt  against  capitalist 
1  profit-making  in  its  modern  shape  had  not  always  been  by 
1  any  means  wholly  unconscious  or  ignorant  of  the  real  causes 
at  work.     Any  new  investigation  of  freshly-put  thought  on 
his  own  subject  he  welcomed  with  delight;    nor  was  he 
much  concerned  about  the  wholesale  plagiarisms  from  him- 
self of  which  he  might  have  reasonably  complained. 

In  these  matters,  as  in  some  others,  Engels  was  far  more 
exacting  and  arrogant  than  Marx  was  himself.  Marx's 
^  readiness  to  change  his  views  when  sufficient  evidence  was 
adduced  against  his  own  opinion  was  also  much  greater 
than  is  commonly  supposed.  Thus,  when  Lewis  H.  Morgan 
proved  to  Marx's  satisfaction  in  his  Ancient  Society  that  the 
gens  and  not  the  family  was  the  social  unit  of  the  old  tribal 
system  and  ancient  society  generally,  Marx  at  once  abandoned 


254     THE  RECORD  OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

his  previous  opinions  based  upon  Niebuhr  and  others,  and 
accepted  Morgan;s  views.  In  other  questions  of  less  im- 
portance he  was  equally  open,  as  indeed  a  man  of  his  ex- 
ceptional intellectual  power  could  scarcely  fail  to  be. 

My  close  acquaintance  with  Marx  at  this  period  naturally 
brought  my  wife  and  myself  into  contact  also  with  Mrs. 
Marx  and  their  daughter  Eleanor.  Marx  and  Eleanor  dined 
with  us  more  than  once  in  Devonshire  Street,  but  Mrs. 
Marx  was  already  too  ill  to  leave  the  house.  Mrs.  Marx 
was  a  refined  and  highly  intelligent  woman  of  great  charm 
of  manner  and  conversation.  Come  of  an  aristocratic  family, 
her  father  being  a  statesman  of  the  highest  distinction  in 
Hanover,  she  had  committed  an  unforgivable  offence  against 
her  caste  by  marrying  the  man  of  genius  who  was  now  her 
husband.  From  Mrs.  Marx  my  wife  heard  much  about 
Marx  which  brought  him  into  far  closer  touch  in  our  minds 
with  the  common  life  of  common  mortals. 

They  had  suffered  much  for  their  opinions  and  had  under- 
gone many  vicissitudes  of  fortune.  On  one  occasion  Marx 
himself  being  in  great  need  went  out  to  pawn  some  house- 
hold silver.  He  was  not  particularly  well  dressed  and  his 
knowledge  of  English  was  not  so  good  as  it  became  later. 
The  silver,  unfortunately,  as  it  turned  out,  bore  the  crest 
of  the  Duke  of  Argyll's  family,  the  Campbells,  with  which 
house  Mrs.  Marx  was  directly  connected.  Marx  arrived  at 
the  Bank  of  the  Three  Balls  and  produced  his  spoons  and 
forks.  Saturday  night,  foreign  Jew,  dress  untidy,  hair  and 
beard  roughly  combed,  handsome  silver,  noble  crest  —  evi- 
dently a  very  suspicious  transaction  indeed.  So  thought 
the  pawnbroker  to  whom  Marx  applied.  He  therefore  de- 
tained Marx,  on  some  pretext,  while  he  sent  for  the  police. 
The  policeman  took  the  same  view  as  the  pawnbroker  and 
also  took  poor  Marx  to  the  police  station.  There  again 
appearances  were  strongly  against  him.  "  Saturday  night, 
foreign  Jew,  handsome  silver,  noble  crest,  etc." :  the  case 


KARL  MARX  255 

was  already  decided  before  the  investigation  began.  In 
vain  Marx  explained,  in  vain  expostulated.  His  explana- 
tions were  futile,  his  expostulations  useless.  To  whom 
could  he  refer  as  to  his  respectability  ?  Whence  had  he  this 
handsome  silver  he  was  so  anxious  to  get  rid  of?  Why 
did  he  wait  until  dark  to  pledge  the  plate?  There  was 
nobody  he  could  call  in  at  the  time.  His  truthful  statement 
as  to  the  origin  of  the  spoons  and  forks  was  received  with 
laughing  incredulity.  The  number  of  the  house  where  they 
lodged  was  not  considered  sufficient. 

So  Marx  received  the  unpleasant  hospitality  of  a  police 
cell,  while  his  anxious  family  mourned  his  disappearance, 
and  awaited  in  trepidation  the  husband  and  father  who 
did  not  come  and  the  cash  that  they  so  badly  needed.  So 
Saturday  night  passed.  So  Sunday.  Not  until  Monday 
was  the  founder  of  Scientific  Socialism  able  to  show  con- 
clusively, by  the  evidence  of  quite  "  respect  able "  friends 
resident  in  London,  that  he  was  not  a  thief  and  a  burglar, 
and  that  the  Campbell-crested  silver  was  honestly  his 
property.  This  story,  which  Mrs.  Marx  told  us,  half-laugh- 
ingly,  half-sorrowfully,  has  been  told  more  than  once  before ; 
but  I  tell  it  again  here,  as  showing  the  sort  of  dangers  to 
which  the  unwary  foreigner  is  exposed  in  London  from 
suspicious  pawnbrokers,  and  even  from  our  much-belauded 
police ;  and  also  as  a  hint  to  other  refugees  whose  necessities 
compel  them  to  resort  to  their  " uncle,"  to  enter  upon  the 
conference  in  daylight  and  not  on  a  Saturday  night  when 
people  are  out  of  town. 

But  Marx's  poverty  led  him  into  more  trouble  than  the 
temporary  inconvenience  of  being  locked  up  for  thirty-six 
hours.  Possibly  I  should  not  refer  to  this  but  for  the 
serious  effect  it  had  upon  my  own  relations  with  Marx  him- 
self. Engels,  differing  in  this  respect  from  Marx,  had  the 
money-getting  faculty  fairly  well  developed;  and,  having 
secured  for  himself  a  reasonable  fortune  by  cotton-spinning 


256  THE   RECORD   OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

in  Lancashire  at  a  comparatively  early  age,  retired,  had 
money  at  command,  and  devoted  himself  to  studies  in 
which  he  showed  he  was  second,  and  second  only,  to  Marx. 
I  do  not  myself  believe  that  Engels,  whom  I  never  spoke  to, 
nor  even  saw,  was  a  bad  man,  though  certainly  I  have  no 
reason  personally  to  take  other  than  a  most  unfavourable 
view  of  his  character;  but  he  was  exacting,  suspicious, 
jealous,  and  not  disinclined  to  give  full  weight  to  the  ex- 
change value  of  his  ready  cash  in  his  relations  with  those 
whom  he  helped. 

Marx  was,  to  put  it  in  the  common  form,  "  under  con- 
siderable pecuniary  obligations"  to  Engels.  This,  Mrs. 
Marx  could  not  bear  to  think  of.  Not  that  she  did  not 
recognise  Engels's  services  to  her  husband,  but  that  she  re- 
sented and  deplored  his  influence  over  his  great  friend. 
She  spoke  of  him  to  my  wife  more  than  once  as  Marx's 
/"evil  genius/ '  and  wished  that  she  could  relieve  her  hus- 
band from  any  dependence  upon  this  able  and  loyal  but 
scarcely  sympathetic  coadjutor.  I  was  myself  possessed  at 
that  time  of  good  means,  and  though  I  am  quite  sure  that 
neither  Marx  nor  Mrs.  Marx  had  the  slightest  idea  that  I 
either  could  or  would  take  the  place  of  Engels  if  need  arose, 
I  am  equally  certain  that  Engels  thought  I  might  do  so, 
and,  annoyed  at  the  friendship  and  even  intimacy  which 
was  growing  up  between  Marx  and  myself  in  the  winter 
and  spring  of  1880-1881,  made  up  his  mind  to  break  down 
what  he  thought  might  be  a  rival  influence  to  his  own. 
The  effect  of  all  this  came  later. 

Meanwhile,  as  I  say,  my  friendship  and  regard  for  Marx 
grew  rapidly.  He  told  me  much  about  Heine,  with  whom 
he  had  a  long  correspondence  which  has  never  even  yet 
been  published ;  about  Lassalle,  his  appearance,  his  vigour, 
his  curious  spluttering  utterance  when  excited;  of  his  own 
struggle  against  Bakunin  and  the  sad  downfall  of  the  In- 
ternational —  all  of  which  was  of  course  of  the  greatest 


KARL  MARX  257 

interest  to  me.  I  took  up  my  friends,  Boyd  Kinnear  and 
Butler  Johnstone  and  introduced  them  to  him;  and  one 
evening  I  recall  when  discussing  Freligrath,  Heine,  Hervegh 
and  other  great  German  men  of  letters  of  the  modern  era, 
he  insisted  upon  my  reading  out  to  himself  and  Butler 
Johnstone,  Thompson's  (B.V.'s)  translation  of  some  of 
Heine's  smaller  pieces,  which  he  said  were  the  best  that  had 
even  been  done  in  any  language. 

I  became,  indeed,  so  much  in  the  habit  of  calling  upon 
him  and  talking  with  him  that  visitors  were  not  unfre- 
quently  shown  in  as  if  I  had  not  been  there.  It  was  in 
this  way  that  I  met  the  desperate  Russian  anarchist  Hart- 
mann,  who  had  only  that  very  day  sought  refuge  in  this 
country.  The  servant  brought  in  his  name,  and  Marx 
directed  he  should  be  shown  up  at  once.  I  confess  I  dis- 
liked the  appearance  of  the  man  very  much  indeed,  and 
told  Marx  so.  His  reply  to  this,  after  Hartmann  had  gone, 
was  pretty  much  what  has  passed  into  a  proverb  on  the 
turf,  "They  run  in  all  shapes."  So  they  do;  but  I  should 
certainly  pick  my  trusted  "  remover "  of  another  shape  than 
Hartmann's.  And  yet  I  did  the  man  an  injustice.  He 
did  his  work  thoroughly,  and  feeling  unsafe  from  the  Mus- 
covite mouchards  sent  to  kidnap  him  even  in  London,  this 
Jew  conspirator  betook  himself  to  the  Argentine  Republic, 
where  it  is  said  he  was  followed  by  the  Czar's  myrmidons 
and  hounded  on  to  destitution  and  death. 

About  this  time  Henry  George's  Progress  and  Poverty 
began  to  produce  a  great  effect  upon  the  public  mind, 
partly  in  consequence  of  the  land  question  in  Ireland,  and 
even  in  Great  Britain,  being  more  to  the  front  than  it  has 
been  before  or  since  in  our  day;  partly  because  of  the 
active  manner  in  which  it  was  pushed  first  in  the  Radical 
by  William  Webster  and  afterwards  in  the  Liberal  press; 
and  partly  on  account  of  the  bright  journalistic  merit  of 
the  book  itself.  Marx  looked  it  through  and  spoke  of  it 


258     THE  RECORD  OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

with  a  sort  of  friendly  contempt:  "The  Capitalists'  last 
ditch,"  he  said.  This  view  I  scarcely  shared.  I  saw  the 
really  extraordinary  gaps  in  the  work  and  its  egregious 
blunderings  in  economics,  but  I  also  recognised,  to  an 
extent  that  Marx  either  could  not  or  would  not  admit,  the 
seductive  attractiveness  for  the  sympathetic,  half-educated 
mob  of  its  brilliant  high-class  journalese.  I  understood,  as 
I  thought,  that  it  would  induce  people  to  think  about 
economic  problems  who  never  could  have  been  brought  to 
read  economic  books  pure  and  simple;  and  although  I  saw 
quite  as  clearly  then  as  I  do  now  that  taxation  of  land 
values  can  be  no  solution  whatever  of  the  social  question, 
I  felt  that  agitation  against  any  form  of  private  property 
was  better  than  the  stereotyped  apathy  which  prevailed  all 
round  us. 

There  was  another  opinion  which  I  held  and  put  to  Marx, 
which  also  I  repeated  when  I  wrote  a  notice  on  George  in 
the  Saturday  Review  shortly  after  his  lamented  death. 
There  is  such  a  thing  as  teaching  by  error.  It  was,  or  so  it 
seemed  to  be  to  me,  quite  impossible  for  any  intelligent 
person  to  read  through  Progress  and  Poverty  without  detect- 
ing its  gross  economic  mistakes.  The  glittering  super- 
ficiality of  George's  attacks  upon  private  ownership  of  land 
must  surely,  I  thought,  lead  the  least  observant  to  reflect 
upon  the  drawbacks  to  the  private  ownership  of  capital. 
When  George  stated  that  all  which  was  not  wages  was 
rent,  it  seemed  incredible  that  any  one  should  fail  to  in- 
quire who  then  takes  profit  and  interest?  What  had 
become  of  them?  Therefore,  I  argued,  George  will  teach 
more  by  inculcating  error  than  other  men  can  impart  by 
complete  exposition  of  the  truth.  Marx  would  not  hear  of 
this  as  a  sound  contention.  The  promulgation  of  error 
could  never  be  of  any  good  to  the  people,  that  was  his  view. 
"To  leave  error  unrefuted  is  to  encourage  intellectual  im- 
morality. For  ten  who  go  farther,  a  hundred  may  very 


KARL  MARX  259 

easily  stop  with  George,  and  the  danger  of  this  is  too  great 
to  run."  So  far  Marx.  Nevertheless,  I  still  hold  that 
George's  temporary  success  with  his  agitatory  fallacies 
greatly  facilitated  the  promulgation  of  Marx's  own  theories 
in  Great  Britain,  owing  to  the  fact  that  the  public  mind  had 
been  stirred  up  to  consider  the  social  question,  and  political 
economy  generally,  by  George's  easily  read  book.  But 
that  George's  fluent  inconsequence  should  be  uncongenial 
to  Marx's  scientific  mind  is  not  surprising.  George  was  a 
boy  with  a  bright  farthing  dip  fooling  around  within  the 
radius  of  a  man  using  an  electric  search-light. 

The  longer  I  knew  Marx  the  more  my  admiration  and 
regard  for  him  increased,  and  the  more  I  could  appreciate 
the  human  side  of  his  character.  This  modification  of  my 
view  of  him  is,  I  think,  unintentionally  apparent  in  what 
I  have  written  about  him  above.  At  first  the  aggressive, 
intolerant,  and  intellectually  dominant  side  of  him  pre- 
ponderated; only  later  did  the  sympathy  and  good-nature 
which  underlay  his  rugged  exterior  become  apparent. 
Children  liked  him,  and  he  played  with  them  as  friends.  As 
I  comprehended  Marx's  views  more  and  more  thoroughly, 
and  appreciated  not  only  their  accuracy  and  depth,  but 
their  vast  width  and  scope,  I  determined  I  would  do  my 
utmost  to  spread  a  knowledge  of  his  works  and  theories  in 
the  English-speaking  world;  while  endeavouring  at  the 
same  time  to  ally  his  bolder  conceptions  to  a  more  imme- 
diate policy  of  my  own.  It  never  occurred  to  me,  I  confess, 
that  the  result  of  my  first  effort  in  this  direction  would  be 
that  I  should  have  a  serious  breach  with  Marx  himself, 
and  that  he  would,  misunderstanding  my  action  entirely, 
enter  upon  a  series  of  attacks  upon  myself  of  the  most 
vindictive  character,  followed  up  by  Engels  with  even  more 
of  vitriolic  fervour  for  years.  But  our  friendship  remained, 
so  far  as  I  know,  undisturbed  up  to  the  middle  of  1881. 
What  upset  it  I  shall  briefly  state  in  its  place.  I  unfor- 


260     THE  RECORD  OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

tunately  destroyed  most  of  Marx's  letters  to  me  at  the 
time  of  our  difference,  but  one  I  have  discovered  which 
appears  below. 

December  8,  1880. 

MY  DEAR  SIR  —  Mrs.  Marx,  like  most  sickly  people  whose  ill- 
ness has  assumed  a  chronic  character,  becomes  sometimes  sud- 
denly unable  to  leave  her  bedroom  and  then  fit  again  for  social 
intercourse.  Believing  she  could  within  a  few  days  pay  a  visit 
to  Mrs.  Hyndman,  she  did  not  write  to  her  at  once,  but  as  we 
are  this  week  inundated  with  visitors  from  the  Continent,  she 
begs  me  to  write  you  that  she  will  give  herself  the  pleasure  to  call 
upon  Mrs.  Hyndman  next  week. 

I  welcome  the  prospect  of  the  journal  you  speak  of.  If  you 
say  that  you  do  not  share  the  views  of  my  party  for  England  I 
can  only  reply  that  that  party  considers  an  English  revolution 
not  necessary,  but  —  according  to  historic  precedents  —  possible. 
If  the  unavoidable  evolution  turn  into  a  revolution,  it  would  not 
only  be  the  fault  of  the  ruling  classes,  but  also  of  the  working 
class.  Every  pacific  concession  of  the  former  has  been  wrung 
from  them  by  " pressure  from  without."  Their  action  kept  pace 
with  that  pressure  and  if  the  latter  has  more  and  more  weakened, 
it  is  only  because  the  English  working  class  know  not  how  to 
wield  their  power  and  use  their  liberties,  both  of  which  they  possess 
legally. 

In  Germany  the  working  class  were  fully  aware  from  the  begin- 
ning of  their  movement  that  you  cannot  get  rid  of  a  military 
despotism  but  by  a  Revolution.  At  the  same  time  they  under- 
stood that  such  a  Revolution,  even  if  at  first  successful,  would 
finally  turn  against  them  without  previous  organisation,  acquire- 
ment of  knowledge,  propaganda,  and  (word  illegible).  Hence 
they  moved  within  strictly  legal  bounds.  The  illegality  was  all 
on  the  side  of  the  government,  which  declared  them  en  dehors  la 
loi.  Their  crimes  were  not  deeds,  but  opinions  unpleasant  to  their 
rulers.  Fortunately,  the  same  government  —  the  working  class 
having  been  pushed  to  the  background  with  the  help  of  the  bour- 
geoisie —  becomes  now  more  and  more  unbearable  to  the  latter, 
whom  it  hits  on  their  most  tender  point  —  the  pocket.  This 
state  of  things  cannot  last  long. 

Please  to  present  my  compliments  to  Mrs.  Hyndman.  — 
Yours  very  truly, 

(Signed)     KARL  MARX. 

It  is,  I  suppose,  the  lot  of  all  active  and  vigorous  agita- 
tors to  have  serious  differences  with  their  closest  friends 


KARL  MARX  261 

and  co-workers.  I  have,  unfortunately,  had  more  than 
one  sad  experience  of  this  kind,  and  unfortunately  just  at 
the  time  when  I  most  appreciated  him  and  most  admired 
him,  such  a  breach  occurred  between  Marx  and  myself. 
Suffice  it  to  say  here,  that  when  I  published  my  little  Eng- 
land for  All  Marx  felt,  or  was  persuaded  he  felt,  that  I  had 
wronged  him  by  appropriating  certain  of  his  ideas  without 
due  acknowledgment,  and  with  a  view  to  my  own  personal 
advancement.  As  assuredly  I  had  nothing  whatever  to 
gain  personally  by  setting  on  foot  the  Democratic  Federa- 
tion, and  as  also  I  printed  the  following  in  the  Preface  to 
my  book,  I  cannot  see  that  Marx  had  any  ground  for  com- 
plaint. 

In  this  changeful  period  when  the  minds  of  men  are  much 
troubled  about  the  future,  and  many  seem  doubtful  whither  we 
are  bound,  I  have  attempted  to  suggest  for  the  Democratic  party 
in  this  country  a  clear  and  definite  policy.  The  views  expressed 
in  this  little  work  do  not,  I  am  aware,  accord  with  the  commonly 
received  politics  and  economy  of  the  day.  Holding,  as  I  do, 
strong  opinions  as  to  the  capacity  of  the  great  English-speaking 
democracies  to  take  the  lead  in  the  social  reorganisation  of  the 
future,  I  think  it  right  to  state  them,  and  to  show  at  the  same 
time  how  seriously  the  working  people  suffer  under  our  present 
landlord  and  capitalist  system. 

From  the  luxurious  classes,  as  a  whole,  I  expect  little  support. 
They  have  plenty  of  writers  ready  to  champion  their  cause.  To 
the  people  alone  I  appeal,  and  their  approval  will  be  my  reward. 

It  was  for  the  Democratic  Federation  that  I  originally  wrote 
this  book,  and  I  present  to  its  members  the  first  copies  to-day. 

For  the  ideas  and  much  of  the  matter  contained  in  Chapters  \ 
II.  and  III.  I  am  indebted  to  the  work  of  a  great  thinker  and  \ 
original  writer,  which  will,  I  trust,  shortly  be  made  accessible  toy 
the  majority  of  my  countrymen. 

H.  M.  H. 

June  8,  1881. 

10  DEVONSHIRE  STREET,  PORTLAND  PLACE, 
LONDON,  W. 

However,  this  incident  caused  a  breach  between  us,  and 
we  did  not  become  friends  again  until  shortly  before  his 
lamented  death.  In  the  interval,  Marx  with  his  usual 


262     THE  RECORD  OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

\  tendency  to  bitter  personalities,  had  himself  written  some 

)  things  about  me,  which  I  don't  think  he  recalled  afterwards 
with  any  satisfaction.  But  Mrs.  Marx's  lingering  illness, 
his  own  deteriorating  health  and  certain  annoyances  and  dis- 
appointments which  are  almost  certain  to  come  to  such  a 
man  as  Marx,  had  together  ruffled  the  evenness  of  his  tem- 
per and  disposed  him  to  see  the  worst  side  of  things. 

Besides,  Marx  was  not  a  good  judge  of  men,  nor  ready 
to  give  way  even  on  indifferent  points  in  order  to  secure 
agreement  and  arrange  cohesion.  That  he  should  have 
given  his  full  confidence  to  Maltman  Barry,  who  most 
assuredly  was  not  a  Socialist,  and  to  Edward  Aveling,  who, 
though  he  became  a  Socialist  and  the  virtual  husband  of 
his  daughter  Eleanor,  was  untrustworthy  in  every  relation 
of  life,  is  sufficient  evidence  that  Marx  was  apt  to  judge 
men  rather  in  accordance  with  what  he  hoped  to  find  than 

;  with  facts  as  they  existed.  Moreover,  not  being  himself 
naturally  addicted  to  suspicion,  he  had  become  exceedingly 
distrustful  of  many  who  had  no  trace  of  the  spy  in  them  at 
all:  a  trait  which  he  and  Engels  shared  most  amusingly. 
On  one  important  occasion  they  felt  quite  certain  that  as 
honest  not  to  say  stupid  an  Englishman  as  ever  lived, 
having  broken  away  from  the  "International"  of  which  he 
had  been  secretary,  had  at  the  same  time  kept  the  Minute 
Book  of  the  proceedings  for  nefarious  use  against  that 
organisation.  There  was  a  terrible  disturbance,  Marx  and 
Engels  being  specially  incensed.  A  determined  friend  was 
told  off  to  go  and  threaten  the  culprit.  He  met  the  ex- 
secretary  on  his  way  bringing  back  the  Minute  Book  under 
his  arm.  He  had  never  had  the  slightest  intention  of  keep- 
ing it. 

t  It  must  also  be  admitted  that,  in  practical  politics,  Marx 
made  very  serious  mistakes,  even  in  regard  to  his  own 
country,  and  showed  some  lack  of  confidence  in  the  con- 
quering might  of  his  own  theories  when  brought  into  con- 


KARL  MARX  263 

.    flict,  or  at  least  combination,  with  other  opinions.     Thus  he 

undoubtedly  viewed   with  distrust   and   even   directly  op- 

I   posed  the  consolidation  of  the  Schweitzer  or  Lassalle  Party 

j  with  the  Marx  Party  which  was  absolutely  indispensable, 

i  and  which  did  more  to  advance  the  progress  of  Socialism  in 

Germany  than  anything  which  has  taken  place  before  or 

since.     This  was  the  more  remarkable  inasmuch  that  both 

parties  were  Socialist,  holding  no  traffic  with  Liberals  in 

any  way;   though  it  was  said  that  Schweitzer  himself  had 

negotiated  with  Bismarck  when  the  German  armies  were 

cantoned  round  Paris.     There  was  talk  also  of  a  concerted 

revolutionary   rising  in   Berlin,    and   that   Schweitzer   had 

even  succeeded  in  extracting  from  the  Chancellor  pledges 

of  reform  for  the  working  class.     But  the  Schweitzer  Party 

-,   or  Lassalleaners  were  undoubtedly  more  or  less  Nationalists, 

r  and  the  Marx  Party  were  Internationalists.     That  was  the 

(  main  difference. 

Liebknecht,  who  was  the  main  agent  in  bringing  about 
the  unity  of  the  two  sections,  told  me  he  had  more  trouble 
with  Marx  and  Engels  and  the  little  knot  of  extremists 
who,  not  unnaturally  perhaps,  were  inclined  to  deify  these 
great  thinkers  than  he  had  with  all  the  rest  of  the  German 
Socialists  put  together.  They  could  not  understand  that 
men  like  Bebel  and  Liebknecht  and  their  intimate  asso- 
ciates, who  were  right  in  the  middle  of  the  fray,  must  be 
able  to  judge  better  of  the  necessities  of  the  time  than 
themselves,  who  were  so  much  confined  to  their  libraries, 
and  could  not  feel  how  things  were  going.  But  the  policy 
of  the  men  on  the  spot  won,  and  neither  section  has  ever 
?  had  any  reason  to  regret  the  calling  together  of  the  splendid 
,  Congress  of  Erfurt  which  gave  birth  to  the  greatest  and  the 
best-disciplined  Socialist  Party  in  the  world. 

If  I  speak  of  these  mistakes  of  a  great  mind  in  practical 

life,  it  is  because  I  have  noted  here  and  there  a  disposition 

/  to  set  up  Marx  as  an  infallible  authority  as  to  what  ought 


264  THE  RECORD   OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

or  ought  not  to  be  done  under  the  conditions  of  our  own 
day.  Obviously,  if  he  could  not  judge  correctly  as  to  what 
was  going  on  in  Germany,  and  was  certainly  none  too 
sound  in  his  views  about  politics  in  England,  when  living,  it 
is  a  great  blunder  to  cite  him  as  an  authority  in  relation  to 
events  occurring  when  he  is  dead.  None  would  have  been 
more  ready  to  condemn  such  foolishness  than  Marx  himself. 

But  these  are  all  of  them  small  matters  when  compared 
with  the  magnificent  achievements  which  are  now  admired 
even  by  his  opponents.  If  we  wish  fully  to  comprehend 
what  he  did  we  have  only  to  look  at  the  Socialist  move- 
ment before  his  theories  were  accepted,  and  then  to  take 
account  of  it  to-day.  Giving  the  very  fullest  credit  to  all 
the  precursors  of  Marx,  and  in  nowise  disregarding  the  fine 
preparatory  work  of  St.  Simon,  Owen,  Fourier,  the  Catholic 
agitators  and  Protestant  friends  of  the  people,  the  Eng- 
lish Chartists  and  the  French  revolutionaries,  as  well  as  the 
labour  economists  of  this  and  other  countries,  it  is  not  too 
much  to  say  that  Marx  found  Socialism  a  chaos  of  inco- 
ordinated  ideas,  bootless  sentiment  and  Utopian  experiment, 
and  placed  it  finally  upon  a  scientific  basis.  His  analysis 
of  capitalism  and  his  synthetic  adumbration  of  Socialism 
hold  the  field.  They  form  the  groundwork  of  the  Socialist 
Party  advocacy  in  every  country.  It  is  astonishing  how 
exactly  in  the  main  his  predictions  have  been  fulfilled.  If 
here  and  there,  as  in  the  department  of  agriculture,  his 
forecasts  have  been  apparently  falsified,  a  closer  examina- 
tion shows  that  they  have  been  fully  realised  on  another 
plane.  It  is  certain  also  that  the  upholders  of  theories  in 
opposition  to  Marx's  in  the  field  of  economics  and  history 
have  hitherto  had  very  little  success,  except  in  so  far  as 
they  have  adopted  his  methods  without  acknowledgment. 

He  was  undoubtedly  a  genius,  and  I  consider  it  one  of 
the  great  privileges  of  my  life  that  I  was  permitted  to  know 
him  well. 


KARL  MARX  265 

I  cannot  leave  this  subject  without  touching  upon  that 
materialist  conception  of  history  which  is  perhaps  'Marx's 
greatest  title  to  fame;  though  the  whole  of  his  system, 
economic  and  historic,  stands  together  as  one  complete  view 
of  human  society,  and  it  is  no  accident  that  of  late  years 
all  the  really  original  work  that  has  been  done  in  historical 
investigation  has  been  on  his  theories.  But  those  who 
assume,  as  some  of  his  most  eminent  followers  such  as 
Kafltsky  and  Lafargue  appear  to  do,  that  Marx  saw  noth- 
ing in  history  but  the  immediate  and  direct  action  and 
reaction  of  material  conditions  reflected  accurately  and  con- 
tinuously in  class  wars,  political  struggles  and  social  develop- 
ments are  in  my  opinion  quite  wrong. 

None  could  have  been  less  of  a  dogmatist  on  social  de- 
velopment than  he.  That  material  conditions  do  in  the 
main,  and  in  the  long  run  dominate  and  guide  social  evolu- 
tion nobody,  I  judge,  would  dispute  at  this  time  of  day. 
But  to  state  that  the  investigations  of  the  Greeks  into  the 
properties  of  conic  sections,  or  of  the  Hindus  into  algebra, 
were  due  to  immediate  and  direct  material  influences  is  to 
my  mind  as  absurd  a  proposition  as  to  contend  that  all 
mathematical  expansions  or  imaginary  quantities  which, 
admittedly,  have  no  practical  material  application  to  the 
recognised  facts  around  us,  do  nevertheless  arise  out  of 
these  unrecognised  material  conditions,  and  are  uncon- 
sciously impressed  upon  our  brains.  Yet  the  most  recent 
writer  of  the  extreme  material  school,  Paul  Lafargue,  him- 
self a  son-in-law  of  Marx,  does  go  to  this  length ;  and  Karl 
Kautsky  in  his  controversy  with  Bax  in  the  Neue  Zeit  went 
nearly  as  far  in  his  historic  argument.  The  point  is  serious. 
Marx,  I  am  confident,  never  excluded  from  his  survey  the 
counter-action  of  the  psychologic  upon  the  main  material 
factor  of  action  either  in  society  or  in  the  individual. 


CHAPTER  XVII 

SOCIALIST  AGITATION 

WHY  my  personal  remembrances  of  Henry  George 
should  force  themselves  upon  me  here  I  can  scarcely 
say.  Perhaps  it  is  that  George  himself  was  in  his  way  a 
sort  of  intellectual  Anarchist  who  could  not  look  upon  pro- 
duction and  still  less  upon  exchange  from  other  than  the  in- 
dividual point  of  view.  At  any  rate,  Henry  George,  whose 
Progress  and  Poverty  referred  to  above  made  a  great  stir,  by 
this  time  (1882)  had  come  over  to  Ireland  in  order  to  look 
into  and  write  upon  the  land  question,  and  travelling  on  to 
London,  he  and  his  wife  and  children,  after  having  paid  a 
visit  to  Helen  Taylor,  stayed  at  our  house  for  a  month.  I 
admit  that  I  was  anxious  to  have  him  and  his  family  with 
us,  not  only  for  his  own  and  their  sake,  but  because  I  hoped, 
quite  mistakenly  as  afterwards  appeared,  to  convert  him 
to  the  truth  as  it  is  in  Socialist  economics.  It  seemed  to 
me  quite  incredible  that  a  man  who  could  go  so  far  as  he 
had  gone  would  not  traverse  with  ease  the  remainder  of 
the  distance,  and  thus  obtain  a  sound  conception  of  the 
whole  subject. 

But  I  did  not  make  sufficient  allowance  for  the  seductive- 
ness of  error,  or  perhaps  for  the  natural  disinclination  of  a 
man  who  has  written  a  world-stirring  book,  to  admit  that 
he  had  only  captivated  his  great  audience  by  clever  mis- 
apprehensions agreeably  put.  George  was  in  his  way  as 
provoking  as  Kropotkin.  He  would  be  forced  by  sheer 
weight  of  argument  to  a  certain  point,  and  then,  the  mo- 
ment the  pressure  was  withdrawn,  back  he  would  go  to 

266 


SOCIALIST  AGITATION  267 

his  old  notions,  of  William  with  his  plane  and  Henry  with 
his  axe,  sharing  the  advantage  derived  from  the  loan  of 
these  individually  owned  and  controlled  tools  by  James  or 
John,  as  the  foundation  of  modern  interest  and  profit.  It 
was  useless  to  be  angry  with  him  or  to  press  him  too  hard; 
for  then  he  only  went  off  to  some  of  his  devoted  single-tax 
worshippers,  from  whom  he  returned  more  single-taxy  than 
ever.  However,  I  believe  I  may  take  to  myself  some  of 
the  credit  of  inducing  him  to  write  his  Social  Problems,  a 
book  which,  though  it  never  attained  anything  approach- 
ing to  the  popularity  of  his  early  work,  showed  that  he  was 
beginning  to  understand  that,  in  our  complicated  modern 
society,  man  cannot  live  by  land  alone.  George  was  a 
delightful  personality.  He  had  no  great  depth  of  mind, 
and  he  did  not  pretend  to  have  it.  What  he  saw  he  saw 
clearly,  and  he  held  fast  to  the  ideas  which  had  taken  hold 
of  him,  not  he  of  them.  The  religious  turn  of  his  thought 
I  never  fully  comprehended  until  I  was  debating  against 
him  with  Mr.  Henry  Labouchere  as  Chairman  at  the  old 
St.  James's  Hall.  Then  his  arched  bald  head  rose  up  like 
an  apse  on  the  other  side  of  the  table,  and  I  saw  that  his 
bump  of  reverence  was  of  cathedral  proportions. 

Humorous,  good-natured  and  fond  of  discussion,  his  was 
not  by  any  means  a  first-rate  intellect.  I  don't  think  my 
old  friend  and  comrade,  Theodore  Wright,  will  ever  forget 
the  debate  between  George  and  myself,  which  he  was  so 
very  kind  as  to  take  down  in  our  dining-room  for  publica- 
tion in  the  Nineteenth  Century,  on  George's  second  visit.  I 
am  quite  sure  I  never  shall.  His  hesitations,  his  correc- 
tions, his  incapacity  to  appreciate  what  he  had  said  just 
before  gave  me  a  new  and  by  no  means  a  pleasant  experi- 
ence. I  am  not,  I  regret  to  say,  blessed  with  an  over- 
abundance of  patience,  and  what  I  had  was  soon  exhausted, 
though,  of  course,  I  could  not  show  that  to  such  a  good 
fellow  as  George  really  was. 


268     THE  RECORD  OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

It  was  this  incapacity  of  his  to  understand  his  exact 
position,  or  where  he  wished  to  go,  that  landed  this  honest, 
sympathetic,  well-meaning  man  in  the  sad  mess  he  got 
into  afterwards  in  America.  Though  he  saw  the  evils  of 
Trusts  as  clearly  as  any  of  us,  he  could  not  believe  that 
they  were  the  natural  and  inevitable  outcome  of  the  last 
stage  of  competitive  capitalism;  that  they  could  only  be 
dealt  with  advantageously  on  a  collective  basis;  or  that  if 
land  were  taxed  up  to  its  highest  possible  value  this  would 
rather  accelerate  than  retard  the  development  of  Trusts. 
Consequently,  he  fell  into  capitalist  hands  and  was  every 
way  the  worse  for  it.  But  that  he  meant  well  to  the  work- 
ing class  from  whom  he  sprang  I  have  no  doubt  whatever. 

His  indifference  to  some  of  our  English  prejudices  was 
at  times  rather  annoying.  On  one  occasion  we  were  pass- 
ing the  top  of  Great  Portland  Street,  going  home  to  lunch, 
when  George  espied  a  barrow-load  of  whelks  at  the  corner 
being  sold  by  the  costermonger  who  owned  them.  "I  say, 
Hyndman,"  quoth  George,  "I  like  the  look  of  those  whelks. 
I  guess  I'll  take  a  few  of  those  whelks."  "All  right,"  said 
I ;  "if  you  like  them  I'll  have  some  sent  in  for  you."  "No," 
was  the  answer;  "I  like  them  here  and  now."  Expostula- 
tion was  useless.  So  George  consumed  his  whelks  from  the 
barrow  while  I,  got  up  in  the  high  hat  and  frock  coat  of 
non-whelk-eating-at-the-corner  civilisation,  stood  by  and 
saw  him  do  it.  I  had  not  then  cleared  myself  of  old  class 
prejudices  even  to  the  extent  I  have  to-day,  and  if  George 
had  any  grudge  against  me,  either  then  or  later,  he  cer- 
tainly paid  me  out  on  that  occasion.  I  never  see  a  whelk 
stall  at  a  street  corner  to  this  day  but  I  feel  inclined  to  bolt 
off  in  another  direction.  After  all,  it  is  the  very  small 
things  of  life  which  cause  the  greatest  annoyance.  But  I 
always  look  back  with  pleasure  to  my  relations  with  George. 

Though  overlaid  in  the  early  months  by  the  Irish  agita- 
tion, the  Socialist  propaganda  of  the  Democratic  Federation 


SOCIALIST  AGITATION  269 

went  steadily  on,  and  we  slowly  gathered  around  us  most  of 
the  abler  young  men  of  the  advanced  section.  The  Press 
thought  proper  to  laugh  at  all  this,  and  one  Tory  organ 
went  so  far  as  to  write,  "The  Democratic  Federation  as 
Mr.  Hyndman  will  persist  in  calling  himself!77  That,  of 
course,  with  the  intention  of  discouraging  the  others.  But 
an  incident  in  the  early  days  is  worth  recalling  as  proving 
what  a  feeble  set  the  Radicals  were.  There  was  a  con- 
tested election  in  Tyrone,  when  the  feeling  against  the 
Liberal  Government  was  very  bitter  indeed.  A  Mr.  Harold 
Rylott  was  chosen  as  an  independent  candidate  to  make  a 
fight  against  Liberal  Coercion  and  in  favour  of  Home  Rule. 
This  raised  a  tremendous  hubbub  among  the  Gladstone- 
worshipping  Liberals  who,  of  course,  denounced  poor  Rylott 
and  his  supporters  as  traitors,  reactionists,  sinners  against 
the  light,  etc.,  and  tumbled  out  the  old  familiar  Liberal  lies 
against  them  which  had  done  service  so  often  before  and 
have  done  similar  service  so  often  since. 

Why  is  it,  by  the  way,  that  Liberals  are  so  strongly 
addicted  to  "terminological  inexactitudes'7  in  politics? 
Why  is  it  that  their  special  party  creed  renders  it  incumbent 
upon  them  to  play  tricks  with  the  truth  whenever  it  suits 
their  purpose?  How  does  it  come  about  that  no  sane 
man  would  think  of  placing  the  slightest  reliance  upon  the 
Liberal  Party  carrying  out  when  in  office  the  pledges  made 
at  the  polls  in  order  to  obtain  a  majority?  The  Tories 
nowadays  represent  capitalism  as  completely  as  Liberals. 
They  would,  at  need  I  do  not  doubt,  be  as  brutal  and  un- 
scrupulous in  the  future  as  they  were  in  the  forgotten  past. 
But  it  is  a  very  extraordinary  thing  that  for  the  last  fifty 
years  all  the  shooting  down  of  the  people  has  been  done 
not  by  them  but  by  the  Liberals.  The  Tories  have  not 
undertaken  to  introduce  and  carry  through  important  social 
measures  and  then  abandoned  them  altogether  as  incon- 
venient when  in  power.  We  have  even  obtained  from 


270     THE  RECORD  OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

them,  purely  for  their  own  political  ends  I  at  once  admit, 
some  of  the  most  important  remedial  measures,  social  and 
political,  on  the  Statute  Book.  But  Liberals  act  as  I  state. 
Why  is  this?  I  do  not  pretend  to  say:  " Sammy."  "Yes, 
sir."  "Have  you  dusted  the  pepper?"  "Yes,  sir."  "Have 
you  sanded  the  sugar?"  "Yes,  sir."  "Then  come  to 
prayers."  Do  Liberals  really  carry  into  the  political 
sphere  similar  methods  to  those  by  which  they  have  piled 
up  fortunes  in  the  industrial  field?  I  cannot  say.  But 
this  seems  to  be  a  probable  explanation. 

At  any  rate,  our  ablest  predecessors  and  forerunners  in 
the  championship  of  the  cause  of  the  workers  on  both  sides 
of  the  Irish  Channel,  the  noble  band  of  Chartists,  whose 
work,  after  a  full  generation  of  apathy,  we  Social-Demo- 
crats took  up,  and  whose  glorious  memory  we  have  revived 
and  cherished  —  Ernest  Jones,  George  Julian  Harney, 
Bronterre  O'Brien,  Henry  Vincent  and  the  rest  of  them  - 
found,  as  we  have  found,  that  the  Whigs  and  the  Liberals 
are  the  worst  and  most  treacherous  enemies  of  the  people. 
In  no  country,  so  far  as  my  study  of  history  tells  me,  has 
any  political  party  ever  played  such  a  game  successfully 
for  so  long  a  period.  The  Radicals  have  throughout  been 
merely  the  hewers  of  wood  and  the  drawers  of  water  for 
the  Whigs,  the  Liberals,  and  their  lawyers.  "Sufferance  is 
the  badge  of  all  our  tribe,"  said  Mr.  Bernal  Osborne  fifty 
years  ago ;  and  when  any  of  their  abler  men  have  a  sub- 
ordinate office  chucked  to  them,  in  order  to  quiet  the  restive- 
ness  which  at  long  intervals  comes  upon  the  party,  they 
prove  to  be  as  unscrupulous  and  as  tyrannical  as  their 
leaders. 

But  the  Tyrone  Election  was  a  temporary  revolt  against 
all  this  wretched  Liberal  tyranny  and  repression  in  Ireland. 
Anyone  would  have  thought  that  the  Radicals  would  fully 
sympathise  with  such  action.  The  Democratic  Federation 
did  warmly,  and  we  issued  a  Manifesto,  which  I  signed. 


SOCIALIST  AGITATION  271 

This  pronouncement  of  the  new  advanced  party  was 
placarded  all  over  Tyrone,  and  was  published  in  the  anti- 
Coercion  and  anti-Liberal  papers.  Thereupon  the  Radical 
Clubs  of  London,  and  most  of  the  Radicals,  forsook  us  and 
fled.  We  all  of  us  regretted  this,  but  it  was  really  the  best 
thing  that  could  have  happened,  and  hastened  our  devel- 
opment towards  clear-cut  definite  Socialism,  a  tendency 
which,  I  think,  was  strengthened  by  a  little  pamphlet  I 
republished  in  that  year  giving  Spence's  famous  pamphlet 
on  "The  Nationalisation  of  the  Land  in  1792,"  and  adding 
to  it  some  notes  on  "Nationalisation  of  the  Land  in  1882." 
About  this  time,  too,  men  and  women  of  great  ability 
joined  our  body.  It  is  indeed  sad  to  look  back  and  see  the 
number  of  really  capable  people  who  joined  us  in  this  year, 
and  then  to  note  that,  instead  of  remaining  with  us  and 
constituting  a  great  party,  so  many  of  them  drifted  away 
and  formed  cliques.  In  addition  to  Morris  there  were  with 
us  at  this  time,  Carpenter,  Bernard  Shaw,  Bland  and  Mrs. 
Bland,  Quelch,  Scheu,  Olivier,  Graham  Wallas,  and  others. 

In  January  1882  I  took  the  Hall  at  Westminster  Palace 
Chambers  for  a  series  of  public  discussions  on  "Practical 
Remedies  for  Pressing  Needs."  The  "remedies"  proposed, 
the  stepping-stones  advocated,  included,  among  others,  the 
Feeding  of  Children  in  the  Board  Schools;  the  Organisa- 
tion Co-operatively  of  Unemployed  Labour;  the  Eight 
Hour  Law;  the  Nationalisation  of  Railways  and  Mines; 
and  the  Construction  and  Maintenance  of  wholesome  Homes 
for  the  People  by  public  bodies,  national  and  municipal,  at 
public  cost.  These  discussions  brought  me  into  contact 
with  many  whom  I  did  not  know  before,  and  cemented 
the  ties  existing  between  those  who  were  already  members. 

It  is  Very  sad  to  recognise,  after  twenty-nine  years  of 
assiduous  agitation,  that  not  one  of  these  remedial  meas- 
ures has  yet  been  passed  into  law,  and  that  the  physical, 
mental  and  moral  degeneration  of  large  masses  of  our  popu- 


272  THE  RECORD   OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

lation,  which  they  were  specially  intended  to  check,  has 
gone  steadily  on  ever  since.  The  capitalist  class  and  their 
hangers-on  in  this  country  will  not  accept  admittedly  bene- 
ficial palliatives  of  their  anarchical  system,  even  when  its 
ill-effects  on  the  national  health  and  well-being  have  been 
officially  acknowledged.  In  France,  and  more  particularly 
in  Paris,  an  effort  was,  however,  at  once  made  to  deal  with 
the  feeding  and  clothing  of  necessitous  children,  whose 
proper  physical  development  was  seen  to  be  the  most  valu- 
able asset  of  the  entire  State. 

It  has  been  the  fashion  to  say,  until  lately,  that  individual 
beneficence  and  public  charity  are  quite  sufficient  to  meet 
the  case  of  anaemic  and  half-starved  children  who,  owing  to 
their  physical  condition,  are  quite  unable  to  take  advantage 
even  of  the  poor  sort  of  education  provided  at  our  common 
schools.  Of  the  imperative  need,  not  only  for  feeding  but 
for  clothing  such  children  and,  from  any  wide  national  and 
citizen  view  of  the  problem,  the  extreme  desirability  of 
removing  them  altogether  from  their  slum  quarters  in  the 
cities,  there  can  be  no  doubt  whatever  on  the  part  of  any 
impartial  observer  who  has  looked  into  the  facts  as  ex- 
hibited in  the  schools.  But  we  still  cling  to  the  old  ideas 
that  the  community  is  in  no  sense  responsible,  and  that 
somehow  or  another,  in  this  direction  as  in  others,  we  shall 
"muddle  through."  But  that  we  can  succeed  without  col- 
lective effort  is  quite  impossible,  and  the  failure  of  charity 
to  cope  with  the  problem  is  now  everywhere  apparent. 

I  saw  one  attempt  of  the  kind  very  close,  and  its  hope- 
lessness impressed  itself  upon  me  from  the  first.  My  wife 
may,  I  believe,  rightly  claim  to  have  organised  more  free 
meals  for  children  in  London  during  several  successive 
winters  than  any  other  person.  Each  winter  she  distributed 
with  the  help  of  Lady  Jeune  and  others  fully  30,000  free 
meals.  It  was  very  hard  and  distressing  work,  though  the 
benefit  to  the  children  of  even  one  really  good  meal  a  day, 


SOCIALIST  AGITATION  273 

and  this  my  wife  always  gave  them,  was  speedily  apparent. 
But  there  were  tenfold  and  more  the  number  outside  unfed, 
and  even  those  who  got  the  meal  in  winter  were  not  pro- 
vided for  in  summer.  So  the  whole  field  to  be  covered  was 
manifestly  too  extended  to  be  adequately  dealt  with  by 
individual  effort,  while  the  strain  on  the  health  and  strength 
of  the  organiser  was  too  great.  Nevertheless  the  improve- 
ment wrought  in  the  children's  physique,  even  by  this 
pitiful  little  attempt  to  build  up  the  coming  generation  of 
citizens  into  something  like  vigorous  humans,  showed  what 
fine  results  could  be  achieved  by  adequate  administration 
on  a  scale  commensurate  with  the  enormous  numbers  to  be 
supplied  with  food,  whose  conditions  of  existence  are  still 
getting  worse  rather  than  better. 

Even  more  marked  was  the  improvement  brought  about 
by  taking  the  children  down  to  the  seaside  and  feeding 
them  well  for  a  few  weeks.  The  parents  actually  did  not 
know  their  own  offspring,  in  not  a  few  cases,  when  they  met 
them  at  the  railway  station  on  their  return.  Thus  in  all 
those  instances  in  which  the  children  have  not  some  con- 
stitutional ailment  —  as  unfortunately  is  the  case  with 
quite  a  large  percentage  in  London  and  in  the  manufactur- 
ing districts  —  good  food,  good  air,  good  surroundings,  and 
careful  treatment  soon  pick  them  up ;  though,  of  course,  all 
the  health  thus  gained  quickly  disappears  again  in  the 
atmosphere  and  environment  of  the  working-class  districts. 
Personally  I  was  amazed  at  what  good  food  and  kindness 
did  in  a  short  time.  If,  also,  the  children  were  taken  young 
enough  the  improvement  in  their  manners  was  as  remark- 
able as  that  in  their  physique. 

Much  as  I  had  seen  of  the  poor  and  their  ways,  I  could 
not  have  believed  that  such  ignorance  and  uncouth  mis- 
behaviour could  exist,  until  I  saw  some  of  the  first  of  these 
meals  given  in  very  poor  localities.  The  children  looked  at 
the  white  cloth  spread  on  the  table,  and  one  of  them  asked, 


274  THE  RECORD   OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

"What's  that  for?"  "Oh,  that's  a  sheet,  don't  yer  know." 
And  then  one  of  the  mischievous  ones  pulled  the  " sheet" 
with  everything  on  the  table  clean  off,  to  the  great  delight 
of  all  the  rest,  everything  not  broken  having  to  be  replaced 
again.  Then  when  the  food  was  brought  up  and  put  on 
the  table  they  fought  for  it  to  begin  with,  not  like  young 
savages,  for  I  never  saw  savage  children  of  any  tribe  fight 
for  their  food,  but  like  ravenous  young  animals,  after  a 
fashion  that  was  as  sad  to  reflect  upon  as  it  was  disgusting 
to  witness.  How  my  wife  put  up  with  it  all  I  could  not 
understand.  However,  she  did,  and,  by  degrees,  the  whole 
attitude  of  the  children  to  the  meals  and  to  one  another 
entirely  changed.  When  they  learnt  by  experience  that 
there  was  plenty  for  all;  that  they  could  be  comfortably 
seated  round  a  clean  cloth,  which  looked  much  nicer  clean 
than  messed;  that  if  they  only  waited  with  reasonable 
patience,  while  not  keeping  too  still,  they  would  be  quickly 
served,  the  children  behaved  very  well  indeed.  In  fact 
they  became  quite  well-mannered  little  creatures,  ceasing 
to  grab  at  the  bits  of  meat  or  bread  and  taking  care  not  to 
spill  things  about.  In  short,  from  dirty,  disagreeable  little 
animals  they  developed  into  decent  little  human  beings. 

This  taking  their  meals  in  common  was  in  itself  an  edu- 
cation for  them  in  manners.  But  then  the  meals  were 
good,  wholesome,  substantial  meals,  though  cheap  per  head 
when  provided  in  large  quantities,  and  the  children,  being 
allowed  to  have  as  much  as  they  wanted,  did  not  go  hungry 
away.  Unfortunately,  the  continued  strain  on  my  wife's 
health  was  so  great  that  she  was  obliged  to  give  it  up,  even 
if  she  had  not  been  compelled  to  recognise  that  what  she 
was  doing,  good  as  it  was  from  the  point  of  view  of  philan- 
thropy in  its  little  way,  was  merely  a  drop  in  the  bucket  as 
compared  with  the  needs  of  the  children  of  London.  I  do 
regret,  however,  even  now,  more  than  twenty  years  later, 
that  no  use  could  have  been  made  of  her  exceptional  knowl- 


SOCIALIST  AGITATION  275 

edge  and  powers  of  organisation  in  this  direction  to  show, 
on  a  large  scale  and  under  public  administration,  how  such 
meals  should  be  cooked  and  served. 

I  cannot  here  refrain  from  saying  a  few  words  as  to  the 
short-sighted  incompetence  of  our  governing  classes,  under 
the  profit-mongering  dispensation  of  the  modern  bourgeoisie, 
in  all  that  relates  to  the  welfare  of  the  children  of  the  com- 
munity. I  have  lived  among  what  are  called  " savage" 
tribes,  and  though  I  have  often  noted  their,  to  us,  cruel 
method  of  treatment  of  the  worn-out  aged  or  bouches  in- 
utiles,  I  have  never  met  a  set  of  barbarians  who  permitted 
the  children  of  the  tribe  to  be  neglected  —  never.  They 
are  regarded  as  of  the  highest  importance,  as  being  those 
who  have  to  carry  on  the  work  of  the  whole  community 
in  the  next  generation.  No  such  conceptions  of  the  com- 
munal ethic  have  until  lately  been  accepted  by  English 
civilisation.  The  whole  problem  is  looked  at  from  the  in- 
dividual, or  separate  family,  point  of  view.  It  is  the  duty 
of  parents  to  secure  enough  under  the  competitive  arrange- 
ments of  our  day,  to  snatch  enough,  that  is  to  say,  out  of 
the  proletarian  scramble  for  existence,  to  enable  them  to 
feed,  clothe,  and  house  adequately  the  children  they  beget. 
If  not,  so  much  the  worse  for  the  children !  They  must 
suffer  for  the  sins  —  or  social  disadvantages,  which  mean  in 
practice  the  same  thing  —  of  their  fathers  and  mothers, 
who  should  have  kept  their  sexual  desires  ungratified  or 
the  children  from  being  brought  into  the  world. 

And  yet  the  very  same  people  who  talk  and  write  in  this 
way  are  the  first  to  cry  out  against  any  falling-off  in  the 
increase  of  population,  and  to  rush  to  support  schemes  of 
charity  for  arresting  the  spread  of  tuberculosis  and  other 
poverty-engendered  diseases.  That  it  would  be  infinitely 
more  to  the  advantage  of  the  community,  and  would  help 
even  to  maintain  our  army  in  a  higher  state  of  efficiency, 
to  prevent  the  coming  in  of  such  maladies  by  reasonable 


276     THE  RECORD  OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

attention  to  the  children  in  their  early  years,  through  col- 
lective attention  and  support,  is  an  idea  which  has  only 
just  begun  to  make  way  among  the  highly-educated  classes, 
so  blighted  has  their  intellectual  development  been  by  a 
false  semi-theological  view  of  the  duty  of  society  to  its 
members.  To  myself  who  have  watched  the  deplorable 
physical  decay  of  millions  of  our  population  for  nearly  two 
full  generations,  owing  to  the  lack  of  any  rational  concep- 
tion of  what  ought  to  be  done,  the  whole  thing  seems  per- 
haps the  most  astounding  case  of  social  and  political  im- 
becility the  world  has  ever  beheld.  Even  the  working 
class  of  Great  Britain  has  scarcely  understood,  up  to  to-day, 
the  importance  on  every  ground  of  our  claim  that,  if  only 
as  a  matter  of  economy,  children  should  be  fed  and  clothed 
free,  in  order  to  enable  them  to  take  advantage  of  the  free 
teaching  now  at  their  disposal. 

But  to  return  to  the  experiment  in  Paris.  The  French 
Socialists  on  the  Paris  Municipal  Council  took  up  this  sug- 
gestion of  feeding  and  clothing  all  the  needy  children  who 
attended  the  public  free  schools.  School  kitchens,  it  was 
proposed,  should  be  established,  from  which  good  meals 
would  be  supplied  at  a  cheap  rate.  Those  children  who 
could  afford  to  pay  should  be  called  upon  to  pay;  those 
who  could  not  should  receive  their  food  and,  if  necessary, 
their  clothing  free  of  charge  without  pauperisation,  and 
without  the  fact  being  known  that  what  they  got  was 
gratuitously  provided.  There  are  eighty-one  members  of 
the  Municipal  Council  of  Paris,  of  whom  but  nine  at  this 
time  were  Socialists.  But  the  arguments  of  this  small 
minority,  headed  by  my  friend  the  distinguished  Dr.  Paul 
Brousse,  afterwards  President  of  the  Council  for  two  years 
in  succession,  carried  all  before  them,  and  the  famous 
Cantines  Scolaires,  supported  half  by  subvention  from  the 
Municipality  and  half  from  the  voluntary  subscription  of 
the  Charitable  Societies,  were  set  on  foot.  No  difference 


SOCIALIST  AGITATION  277 

whatever  being  made  between  those  who  paid  for  their 
meals  and  those  who  did  not,  by  degrees,  naturally  enough, 
the  proportion  of  the  latter  has  greatly  increased. 

But  this  gratuitous  feeding  and  supply  of  good  clothes 
to  children  who  need  them  has  produced  an  extraordinary 
effect  upon  the  appearance  and  general  health  of  the  little 
ones  in  the  poorer  quarters  of  Paris.  Compare  children 
coming  out  of  poor  schools  in  the  French  Metropolis  with 
those  coming  out  of  our  schools  in  poverty-stricken  dis- 
tricts in  London,  and  I  declare  that  that  observer  must  be 
a  bigot  indeed  who  fails  to  note  the  terrible  contrast  to  our 
disadvantage.  So  marked  is  the  change  for  the  better  that, 
though  several  attempts  have  been  made  in  Paris  to  go 
back  to  the  old  system,  they  have  utterly  failed;  and  M. 
Sorget,  the  great  Paris  builder  and  contractor,  one  of  our 
chief  opponents  at  the  start,  was  so  convinced  by  what  he 
saw  of  the  good  that  had  been  done  that  he  became  a  strong 
upholder  of  the  scheme. 

Nearly  ten  years  after  the  establishment  of  this  plan  of 
feeding  and  clothing  poor  children  in  Paris,  I  headed  a 
deputation  to  Mr.  Acland,  then  at  the  head  of  our  Depart- 
ment of  Education,  to  beg  him  to  help  in  the  setting  on 
foot  of  a  similar  or  a  better  system  in  England.  Mr.  Acland 
in  his  reply  admitted  that  he  had  seen  the  very  good  results 
of  what  had  been  done  in  Paris,  and  evidently  wished  to 
aid  us.  But  nothing  was  done.  This  was  in  1892.  Nine- 
teen years  more  have  gone  by,  and  the  utmost  we  have 
extracted  from  the  reactionary  capitalist-ridden  House  of 
Commons  is  a  permissive  Act,  allowing  the  Municipalities 
to  impose  a  halfpenny  rate  to  go  towards  feeding  necessitous 
children.  In  the  overwhelming  majority  of  cases,  our 
precious  Bumbles  of  the  Municipalities  have,  of  course, 
declined  to  adopt  the  measure  at  all. 


CHAPTER  XVIII 

GROWTH  OF  THE  MOVEMENT 

r  November  1882  we  held  the  first  meeting  which  pro- 
duced a  direct  public  effect.  At  that  time  a  clergyman, 
the  Rev.  Lewery  Blackley,  set  forth  a  scheme  whereby,  on 
a  basis  of  compulsory  thrift  and  forced  insurance,  the 
working  classes  of  Great  Britain  might  be  legally  persuaded 
to  make  a  sound  provision  for  their  old  age,  by  stinting 
themselves  of  the  necessaries  of  life  in  their  youth  and 
maturity.  This  idea  was  warmly  welcomed  by  the  well-to- 
do,  was  puffed  in  the  capitalist  Press,  and  was  belauded  by 
the  men  of  God  of  every  persuasion.  The  only  class  which 
objected  to  the  reverend  gentleman's  vicarious  philanthropy 
was  the  one  for  whose  benefit  it  was  intended.  The  feeling 
against  it  on  the  part  of  the  workers  was  very  strong  indeed, 
which  was  natural  enough. 

The  Democratic  Federation  took  the  matter  up,  de- 
nounced and  exposed  the  whole  project,  challenged  the 
Rev.  Lewery  Blackley  to  public  debate,  and  so  on.  But 
we  had  little  chance  of  dealing  adequately  with  the  plan 
and  its  supporters  until,  unluckily  for  them,  they  called  a 
public  meeting,  to  sanction  and  bless  the  whole  enterprise, 
at  the  Holborn  Town  Hall.  Mr.  Samuel  Morley,  M.P., 
known  to  us  as  the  "  sainted  Samuel,"  was  announced  to 
take  the  Chair,  and  two  or  three  respectable  personages 
were  announced  to  support  the  speaker  of  the  night,  the 
worthy  rector  who  had  worked  out  this  device  for  stewing 
the  workers  in  their  own  juice.  Thereupon  we  set  to  work 
quietly  but  persistently,  and  we  succeeded  in  packing  at 

278 


GROWTH   OF  THE  MOVEMENT  279 

least  two-thirds  of  the  hall  with  our  sympathisers.  Mr. 
Lloyd  was  the  organiser  on  the  other  side.  Just  before  the 
meeting,  Mr.  Lloyd  was  congratulated  by  one  of  the  com- 
mittee on  having  secured  such  an  excellent  audience.  He 
received  this  tribute  to  his  skill  and  energy  with  the  modesty 
and  self-appreciation  of  one  to  whom  such  a  success  was 
nothing  unusual.  I  looked  round  the  hall  at  the  same 
time  and  felt  equally  gratified.  The  first  sign  of  discord 
was  shown  when  Mr.  Morley  took  his  seat  as  Chairman. 
His  appearance  was  received  not  with  cheers  but  with 
vigorous  groans.  It  was  quite  amusing  to  note  his  surprise 
at  this  greeting.  But  we  had  appealed  to  all  our  friends  to 
give  Mr.  Blackley  and  his  mover  and  seconder  of  the  resolu- 
tion a  fair  hearing,  which  they  all  three  accordingly  had. 
Then  our  two  chosen  speakers  went  forward  to  move  an 
amendment  we  had  drawn  up.  Mr.  Morley  ruled  this  out 
of  order,  and  called  upon  Mr.  Finch  Hatton,  a  young  aristo- 
crat of  wealthy  connections,  to  speak.  Thereupon  uproar 
arose,  accompanied  by  strong  language  and  much  excite- 
ment. Mr.  Morley  stuck  to  his  guns.  Then  I  told  him 
plainly  that  if  he  did  not  adhere  to  the  ordinary  rules  of 
public  meetings  we  should  argue  the  matter  out  on  the 
platform.  A  compromise  was  arrived  at,  whereby  Mr. 
Finch  Hatton  had  ten  minutes  before  Patrick  Hennessey,  a 
well-known  agitator  of  those  days,  and  James  Rowlands, 
the  cab-driver's  secretary,  spoke  for  our  amendment. 
After  that  we  insisted  upon  the  amendment  being  put. 
Put  it  was,  and  carried  by  at  least  two  to  one  amid  great 
cheering.  The  chairman  declined  to  put  the  amendment 
as  a  substantive  resolution,  so  we  did  that  for  him  and 
occupied  the  platform  for  that  purpose.  Little  more  was 
heard  of  Mr.  Blackley  until  he  blossomed  out  into  a  canon 
as  a  reward  for  his  useful  philanthropy.  We  on  our  side 
felt  encouraged  by  our  victory,  and  went  forth  to  suppress 
and  exalt  others  of  a  like  " philanthropic"  turn  of  mind. 


280     THE  RECORD  OP  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

One  result  of  this  meeting  was  to  bring  to  us  a  knot  of 
very  clever  enthusiastic  young  men  who  then  were  bring- 
ing out  the  Christian  Socialist.  Joynes,  Champion,  and 
Frost,  with  them  H.  S.  Salt  and  two  or  three  more,  were 
as  promising  and  capable  a  set  of  men  as  ever  threw  in 
their  lot  with  an  advanced  movement.  Even  their  names 
are  now  almost  forgotten,  but  the  good  work  they  did  has 
survived  both  death  and  disappearance.  J.  L.  Joynes  had 
been  a  master  at  Eton  and  had  given  up  his  place  on  con- 
scientious grounds.  No  more  genial,  fearless,  and  lovable 
personality  ever  took  part  in  our  movement  than  Joynes, 
and  his  literary  ability  was  of  great  service.  His  work  on 
behalf  of  fair-play  in  Ireland  was  most  timely.  Some  of  his 
translations  from  the  German  of  Freiligrath,  Hervegh,  and 
others  are  admirable,  and  preserve  in  English  the  full  spirit 
of  the  original ;  while  his  letter  in  words  of  one  syllable  to 
the  present  Duke  of  Westminster,  when  a  little  boy,  which 
I  published  in  Justice,  was  as  telling  as  anything  of  the 
kind  ever  written.  His  early  and  lamented  death,  I  lay 
to  the  door  of  the  vegetarians.  Vegetarianism  may  keep 
a  lot  of  useless  people  alive:  it  certainly  killed  a  valuable 
and  delightful  personality  in  J.  L.  Joynes.  Notwithstand- 
ing his  chaff  of  " Quarrelsome  Corpse  Eaters,"  as  he  called 
us  flesh-consumers,  he  was  taken  and  we  were  left  —  quar- 
relling. 

Frost,  another  of  the  Christian  Socialist  trio,  fell  under 
the  influence  of  an  extraordinary  adventuress  who  called 
herself  Mrs.  Gordon  Baillie,  and  unfortunately,  owing  to 
her  influence,  got  into  all  sorts  of  mischief  which  ended 
very  badly  indeed.  I  have  always  partly  blamed  myself  for 
this  ending.  Though  Mrs.  Baillie  was  a  very  fine  looking 
woman,  I  took  a  great  dislike  to  her  from  the  first,  and 
when  she  laughed  cheerfully  at  a  phrase  from  a  French 
writer  I  used  in  an  address  I  delivered  on  the  French  Revo- 
lution, to  the  effect  that  the  Count  de  Charolais  had  en- 


GROWTH  OF  THE  MOVEMENT  281 

sanglante  la  debauche,  I  told  Frost  she  was  a  very  dangerous 
woman  for  him  to  consort  with.  I  had  far  better  have  held 
my  tongue.  Opposition  only  made  Frost  more  eager,  and 
off  he  went  with  her.  Champion,  the  third  of  the  party, 
was  a  much  more  complex  individuality  than  either  of  the 
other  two.  Years  afterwards,  when  he  had  completely 
wrecked  one  of  the  most  promising  careers  a  young  man 
could  have  had  before  him,  I  was  talking  about  him  with 
Dr.  Hunter,  the  member  for  Aberdeen,  and  like  Champion, 
a  Scotchman.  I  happened  to  mention  to  Hunter  that 
Champion's  mother  was  an  Urquhart.  "Oh,"  said  Hunter, 
"Urquhart  blood  in  him  —  that  accounts  for  it  all."  All 
this  came  afterwards,  but  when  they  joined  the  Democratic 
Federation  at  the  beginning  of  1883  there  could  not  have 
been  a  more  valuable  set  of  enthusiastic  recruits  to  the 
movement. 

Since  these  days,  Champion  having  upset  us  all  here  and 
lost  our  regard  and  friendship  by  more  than  mere  political 
misunderstandings,  has  largely  made  amends  for  his  action 
in  this  country  by  his  work  for  Socialism  under  the  most 
distressing  physical  circumstances  in  Melbourne,  where  he 
has  helped  to  keep  alive  the  spirit  of  Social  Democracy 
and  to  uphold  the  Red  Flag  against  the  discouraging  com- 
promisers of  mere  Labourism.  In  this  he  has  been  greatly 
helped  by  our  old  friend  and  fellow-agitator,  Tom  Mann. 
It  has  always  seemed  an  extraordinary  thing  to  me  that 
Champion  should  ever  have  gone  wrong  as  regards  Social- 
ism and  his  comrades.  A  smart  artillery  officer,  with  a 
good  knowledge  of  the  world  and  a  successful  career  before 
him,  he  gave  up  his  profession,  as  Joynes  did  his,  on  con- 
scientious grounds  and  then  threw  himself  into  Socialism, 
when  assuredly  nothing  whatever  was  to  be  gained  per- 
sonally, pecuniarily,  or  politically  by  doing  so.  He  worked 
hard  in  the  movement,  ran  great  risks,  showed  remarkable 
pluck  and  ability,  and  became  the  darling  of  the  organisa- 


282  THE  RECORD  OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

tion.  I  was  at  the  time  not  in  the  best  of  health  myself, 
and,  not  anticipating  certainly  that  I  should  attain  to  my 
present  age  in  activity  and  vigour,  I  looked  to  Champion, 
with  his  initiative,  trained  intelligence  and  determination, 
as  the  very  man  to  carry  on  the  work  without  faltering, 
and  to  maintain  our  growing  party  in  good  order  and  fight- 
ing train.  This,  too,  was  the  idea  of  all  of  us,  practically 
without  exception. 

He  himself  seemed  to  feel  this.  Speaking,  and  he  spoke 
well,  in  Regent's  Park  on  one  occasion  he  said,  when  appeal- 
ing to  others  to  join  us:  "Now  is  the  time  to  come  into 
our  ranks.  Now  is  the  time  when  it  is  an  honour  to  be 
with  us.  Victory  for  us  in  the  future  is  quite  certain.  The 
day  is  not  far  distant  when  those  who  are  in  the  fighting 
line  with  us  now  will  regret,  with  Henry  V.  at  Agincourt, 
not  that  we  are  so  few  but  that  we  were  so  many  to  share 
the  greatness  of  the  glory  to  be  won."  Why  then,  seeing 
all  this,  having  refused  to  join  the  superior,  upper-chamber- 
furnished  Fabians,  why  did  he  go  off  as  he  did?  I  am  at 
a  loss  to  know.  But  leaving  the  "Urquhart  blood"  theory 
of  Dr.  Hunter  aside,  I  am  inclined  to  attribute  his  defection 
at  a  critical  time  to  my  own  action.  It  was  Champion's 
birthday,  and  he  dined  with  us.  After  dinner  I  set  to 
work  to  tell  him  all  I  saw,  or  thought  I  saw,  in  the  future, 
and  I  believe  I  convinced  him  that  we  could  not  hope  to 
succeed  at  once  or  for  a  very  long  time.  Thereupon,  with 
the  usual  exquisite  illogicality  of  the  human  mind,  he  set 
to  work  to  try  to  make  twelve  o'clock  at  eleven  by  carrying 
on  an  intrigue  with  the  Tories  in  order  to  bring  about  some 
reforms  in  his  own  day.  I  daresay  this  was  done  with 
complete  honesty;  but  the  amusing  part  of  the  story  is, 
as  he  himself  will  recognise  should  he  read  this,  that  he 
was  carrying  on  his  trade  with  men  whom  I  knew  much 
better  than  he  did,  and  who  used  his  advances  to  them  as 
an  argument  to  me  to  give  up  Socialism  altogether  and 


GROWTH   OF  THE  MOVEMENT  283 

join  their  party;  seeing  that  the  man  I  trusted  most  im- 
plicitly had  so  little  faith  in  the  movement  that  he  wished 
to  attain  success  for  his  cause  in  this  roundabout  way. 

I  have  never  felt  annoyed  at  any  attempt  to  squeeze 
genuine  palliatives  out  of  either  faction.  Until  we  Socialists 
ourselves  obtain  control,  it  is  obvious  that  we  can  only  get 
half-measures  out  of  one  political  camp  or  the  other.  But 
Champion,  I  fear,  did  not  maintain  that  complete  inde- 
pendence which  is  absolutely  essential  in  order  to  have  any 
real  weight  in  such  matters.  Moreover,  I  also  think, 
though  this  may  be  fanciful,  that  when  I  gave  him  the 
original  edition  of  Voltaire's  Candide  I  did  the  movement  a 
very  bad  turn.  I  do  not  know  any  work  more  calculated 
to  destroy  the  confidence  of  anyone  who  is  not  thoroughly 
grounded  in  Socialism  than  Candide,  and  I  fancy  at  that 
time  it  had  this  injurious  effect  on  Champion's  mind.  Any- 
how he  left  us,  and  became  sub-editor  of  the  Nineteenth 
Century  and  seemed  likely  at  one  time  to  play  on  the  Tory 
side  the  same  game  that  his  fellow-Scot,  Mr.  Ramsay  Mac- 
donald,  has  of  late  years  so  skilfully  engineered  to  his  own 
advantage  on  the  Liberal.  How  he  came  to  give  up  all 
this  and  went  to  Australia  I  do  not  know.  But,  once 
there,  he  has,  as  I  say,  done  most  useful  work  for  the  cause. 
His  friend  Frost,  after  going  through  desperate  experiences, 
is  now,  Champion  writes  me,  happily  married  and  a  Pro- 
fessor of  English  at  a  Foreign  University.  If  it  is  any 
satisfaction  to  them  to  know  it,  I  may  tell  them  they  have 
been  very  much  missed  in  the  movement,  to  which  they 
could  have  rendered  very  great  service  in  the  years  that 
have  passed. 

1883  was  in  more  ways  than  one  a  noteworthy  year  for 
us.  Though  those  who  were  not  ready  to  accept  Marx's 
theories  or  to  mix  familiarly  with  the  working  class  went 
off  and  formed  the  bureaucratic  Fabian  Society,  which  has 
since  so  assiduously  promulgated  the  doctrines  of  middle- 


284  THE  RECORD  OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

class  permeation  and  high-toned  intrigue,  their  withdrawal 
was  more  than  compensated  by  the  adhesion  of  others  and 
the  increased  zeal  of  those  who  remained.  In  the  autumn 
of  the  year  I  published  The  Historical  Basis  of  Socialism, 
which  has,  I  think,  been  of  service  in  giving  a  sound  foot- 
hold to  many  who  might  otherwise  have  floundered  in  the 
slippery  paths  of  bourgeois  history  and  economics  and  has 
become  a  sort  of  classic  in  its  way.  As  no  copy  can  be 
bought  under  £2  and  I  have  been  constantly  asked  for  a 
new  edition,  I  have  long  intended  to  bring  it  up  to  date; 
but  as  this  would  entail  a  great  deal  of  rewriting  and  many 
additions  I  have  not  yet  found  time  to  do  so,  though  twenty- 
seven  years  have  now  passed  since  its  publication.  I  set 
to  work  to  write  the  book  in  the  spring  of  1883  because,  as 
I  well  remember,  I  was  struck  by  a  remark  of  Lassalle's 
that  he  regretted  he  had  not  written  what  he  had  to  write 
before  he  went  out  into  the  exhausting  toil  of  public  agita- 
tion, and  I  resolved  to  do  something  of  a  serious  character 
before,  like  him,  I  was  swept  into  the  whirlpool  of  social 
and  political  strife. 

True  though  it  may  be  that,  as  Paul  Louis  Courier  very 
forcibly  argued,  nearly  all  the  most  important  educational 
work  of  the  world  has  been  done  by  pamphlets  and  speeches, 
which  are  but  spoken  pamphlets,  there  is  an  attractiveness 
and  permanence  about  a  book  which  no  pamphlets  or 
speeches  can  achieve;  unless  they  attain  to  the  high  level 
that  leads  to  their  collection  and  embodiment  in  a  book 
afterwards,  and  few  can  expect  that  their  passing  output 
of  writing  or  speaking  will  satisfactorily  arrive  at  this 
eminence  in  a  durable  form.  A  carefully  thought-out  work 
on  a  matter  of  importance,  on  the  other  hand,  may  be  of 
real  use  in  the  transition  period  towards  general  acceptance 
of  the  views  set  forth  —  if,  that  is  to  say,  it  is  of  any  use 
at  all. 

Moreover  it  is  true,  as  Kropotkin  says,  that  History  has 


GROWTH  OF  THE  MOVEMENT  285 

to  be  rewritten  from  the  new  point  of  view;  from  the 
point  of  view,  that  is  to  say,  of  the  interests  of  the  great 
mass  of  the  people  and  not  merely  as  a  record  of  the  doings 
of  the  dominant  classes,  who  have  held  control  in  succes- 
sion in  different  countries  and  whose  ambitions  or  greed 
have  entailed  the  wars  and  piratical  struggles  by  land  and 
by  sea  with  which  historians  have  too  largely  busied  them- 
selves. My  Historical  Basis  of  Socialism  was  an  attempt 
to  do  something  of  the  kind,  for  which  I  admit  I  was  not 
sufficiently  equipped;  but  then  as  I  did  not  know  anyone 
that  was  more  so,  I  made  bold  to  try  what  I  could  do.  I 
was  gratified  when  many  years  later  my  friend,  Professor 
York  Powell,  was  kind  enough  to  say  the  work  had  been 
of  value  to  him,  and  my  comrades  and  friends  of  the  Church 
Socialist  League  have  expressed  the  same  opinion,  and  are 
lending  the  book  out  daily  as  worthy  of  study.1  The  refer- 
ences, I  think  myself,  are  still  worth  looking  over.  I  often 
tell  the  workers  who  sometimes  imagine  the  abler  men  of 
the  upper  classes  do  not  watch  what  is  going  on,  or  study 
our  literature,  that  they  are  quite  mistaken  as  to  this.  I 
have  had  many  opportunities  of  noting  precisely  the  con- 
trary. 

This  particular  book  of  mine  had  not  been  out  a  fort- 
night when  I  happened  to  dine  in  company  with  some  lead- 

1  In  reference  to   The  Economics  of  Socialism  Professor  York  Powell 
wrote  me,  years  later,  the  following  encouraging  letter  : 

'     CHRIST  CHURCH,  OXFORD, 


DEAR  MR.  HYNDMAN  —  I  have  read  the  book  you  kindly  sent  me,  and 
I  like  it  greatly,  as  the  exposition,  handy,  clear  and  well-put,  of  your 
standpoint  and  the  Marxists'.  The  poem  is  also  excellent. 

I  wish  we  were  safer  from  external  trouble.  Reaction  will  follow  dis- 
aster inevitably  if  only  for  a  time.  The  present  parties  without  future, 
without  talent,  without  faith  are  doomed  of  course.  They  are  too  ludi- 
crous. I  hope  to  see  you  here  again  and  shall  call  sometime  if  I  may 
on  you  at  the  "House  of  Wisdom,"  Queen  Anne's  Gate. 

I  sat  up  till  two  to  finish  your  book,  it  interests  me  greatly  to  see  the 
Marx  position  clearly  put.  —  Believe  me,  Yours  faithfully, 

(Signed)     T.  YORK  POWELL. 

Please  remember  me  to  Mrs.  Hyndman. 


286  THE  RECORD   OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

ing  politicians.  All  of  them  had  apparently  read  it,  and 
one  of  them,  Mr.  Goschen,  was  kind  enough  —  though,  of 
course,  strongly  opposed  to  us  —  to  congratulate  me  on  the 
industry  and  learning  it  displayed.  As  Social-Democrats 
are  so  commonly  spoken  of  as  ignorant,  I  think  I  am  at 
liberty  to  refer  to  this  incident.  But  the  truth  is  there 
was  in  1883,  and  there  is  in  1911,  a  very  great  disinclina- 
tion on  the  part  of  our  University  men  as  a  whole,  and  our 
Professors  in  particular,  to  free  their  minds  from  the  shackles 
of  the  old  bourgeois  economics  and  sociology.  They  even 
seem  afraid  to  deal  with  the  facts  of  the  period  other  than 
in  a  disjointed  and  pragmatical  fashion,  without  any  guid- 
ing theory  whatever.  In  any  case  the  fact  remains  that 
the  leading  Continental  Professors,  several  of  whom  I  have 
the  satisfaction  of  numbering  among  my  acquaintances 
and  friends,  are  pursuing  a  much  bolder  course  in  their 
investigations,  with  the  result  that  the  country  which  pro- 
duced William  Petty,  John  Bellers,  Steuart,  Adam  Smith 
and  Ricardo  is  left  completely  in  the  rear  in  the  increasingly 
important  spheres  of  study  —  Political  Economy  and  Ma- 
terial Sociology. 

It  should  not  be  forgotten  that  the  Democratic  Federa- 
tion had  now  developed,  as  I  had  hoped  from  the  first  it 
would,  into  a  thorough-going  revolutionary  organisation. 
This  is  clearly  shown,  among  other  things,  by  The  Summary 
of  the  Principles  of  Socialism  which  I  wrote  in  collaboration 
with  William  Morris  at  the  beginning  of  1884  for  the  Federa- 
tion, and  which  has  had  a  large  circulation  ever  since. 
Our  Stepping-Stones  or  Palliatives  were  only  formulated 
and  agitated  for  as  ameliorative  measures  to  the  existing 
capitalist  anarchy.  Throughout  we  all  of  us  preached, 
then  as  now,  that  no  great  or  permanent  benefit  could 
accrue  to  mankind  at  large  until  the  payment  of  wages  by 
one  class  to  another  class  is  finally  put  an  end  to  and  the 
means  of  making  and  distributing  wealth  are  owned  and 


GROWTH   OF  THE  MOVEMENT  287 

controlled  by  the  whole  community.  This  meant,  of  course, 
a  complete  social  transformation,  the  destruction  of  the 
money  fetish  and  the  apportionment  of  wealth  —  then 
easily  made  as  plentiful  as  water  —  among  the  whole  com- 
munity, who  would  all  from  youth  up  share  in  the  light, 
general,  useful  work  and  participate  fully  in  the  delight  of 
life  thus  rendered  easy  of  attainment  for  everybody.  It  is 
no  mere  tinkering  fiscalism  or  pottering  Labourism  which 
has  kept  up  the  enthusiasm  of  the  Social-Democratic  party 
in  this  island  from  1881  onwards  for  more  than  thirty  years. 


CHAPTER  XIX 

CLEMENCEAU 

I  HAVE  always  found  it  quite  impossible  to  carry  my 
political  animosities  into  my  personal  relations,  unless 
the  particular  individual  has  done  some  unforgivable  injury 
to  the  Socialist  cause.  That,  probably,  is  the  reason  why  I 
cannot  feel  the  bitterness  which  affects  my  French  friends 
towards  the  eminent  Frenchman  of  politics  and  journalism 
M.  Georges  Clemenceau.  I  regard  him  as  the  most  brilliant 
man  I  ever  knew,  and  not  even  his  injustice  as  Prime  Minis- 
ter to  the  workers  on  strike,  which  seemed  to  me  quite 
contrary  to  his  character  and  career,  has  dispelled  the  charm 
which  his  personality  has  for  me. 

I  first  made  M.  Clemenceau's  acquaintance  when  he  was 
the  editor  and  controller  of  La  Justice  and  the  Ministry 
Maker  and  Unmaker  of  the  French  Assembly.  He  was 
then,  as  ever,  a  vigorous  and  at  the  same  time  judicious 
advocate  of  an  Anglo-French  understanding,  but  his  paper 
was  by  no  means  remunerative  and  I  have  always  thought 
it  was  a  great  mistake  he  got  no  support  from  the  Franco- 
phils on  this  side  of  the  Channel.  But  I  suppose  a  vehement 
opponent  of  the  Second  Empire,  an  ex-Mayor  of  Belleville, 
a  thorough-going  Freethinker  and  an  extreme  Radical, 
though  not  a  Socialist,  could  scarcely  be  regarded  without 
prejudice  by  any  Englishman  with  money.  Yet,  looking 
back  at  the  circumstances,  I  wonder,  even  so,  that  so  pa- 
triotic a  Frenchman  and  at  the  same  time  such  a  genuine 
friend  of  England  should  not  have  been  offered  help  from 
this  country;  though  whether  he  would  have  accepted  it, 

288 


CLEMENCEAU  289 

even  if  given  quite  unconditionally,  is  more  than  I  can 
say. 

At  the  period  I  speak  of,  and  for  many  years  afterwards, 
Clemenceau  combined  in  his  own  person  a  number  of  re- 
markable qualities.  He  was  at  one  and  the  same  time  the 
best  leader  of  opposition,  the  best  debater,  the  best  con- 
versationist, the  best  shot,  and  the  best  fencer  in  France. 
Those  were  the  days  when  duels  might  quite  easily  have 
serious  consequences  for  one  or  both  of  the  persons  engaged. 
And  few  indeed  cared  to  tackle  a  left-handed  pistol-shot 
and  a  left-handed  fencer  like  Clemenceau,  who  drank  no 
spirituous  liquors  and  was  always  in  training.  M.  Paul  de 
Cassagnac,  who  had  actually  killed  three  men  himself, 
cried  off  a  duel  when  M.  Clemenceau  challenged  him.  He 
felt  he  would  be  so  much  nearer  to  his  latter  end  as  to  be 
unable  to  distinguish  the  difference  between  that  posture 
and  sudden  death.  Later,  in  addition  to  the  qualities  men- 
tioned above,  Clemenceau  suddenly  added  to  them  the 
faculty  of  being  the  best  journalist  in  France.  As  editor 
of  La  Justice  he  did  not  write  himself.  But  when  he  found 
himself  more  or  less  stranded  politically  as  well  as  pecuni- 
arily, he  took  to  his  pen  with  the  success  stated.  Yet  he 
was  then  fifty-two.  This  I  believe  to  be  unprecedented. 
High-class  political  journalism,  especially  in  Paris,  calls  for 
a  combination  of  faculties  which  anyone  who  knows  any- 
thing about  it  would  think  it  impossible  should  be  developed 
to  such  an  extent  in  a  man  well  past  middle  age.  However, 
so  it  was. 

Clemenceau's  personal  appearance  gives  the  impression 
of  his  character  and  disposition.  Boundless  energy  and 
brightness,  indefatigable  alertness  and  intellectual  aptitude. 
"In  the  game  of  life  as  in  the  game  of  cards  you  must  always 
have  your  stakes  on  the  table. "  So  wrote  Balzac.  And 
Clemenceau  always  had  his  stakes  on  the  table,  and  he  was 
ready  to  risk  his  all  at  any  moment.  When  the  French 


290  THE  RECORD   OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

Socialists  began  to  abuse  him  and  to  minimise  his  great 
qualities  they  spoke  of  him  as  "this  Calmuck,"  which  ap- 
peared to  me  rather  strange  as  a  term  of  contempt,  seeing 
that  the  imputation  in  this  shape  is  rather  racial  than  per- 
sonal. But  the  reason  for  it  was  that  Clemenceau,  with 
his  broad  overhanging  forehead,  keen  and  gleaming  but 
rather  deep-set  eyes,  highish  cheek  bones  and  heavy  mous- 
tache, had  something  of  the  look  of  the  Tartar  peasant  to 
those  who  could  not  see  below  the  surface. 

As  a  matter  of  fact  Clemenceau  looks  what  he  is,  the 
most  brilliant  man  in  French  politics  of  his  period.  I 
admire  JaurSs  immensely  as  an  orator;  at  times  he  rises 
to  very  great  heights,  though  I  wish  now  and  then  he  used 
fewer  words  in  order  to  attain  to  them.  Yet,  when  on  one 
occasion  it  came  to  a  direct  personal  conflict  between  these 
two  brilliant  orators  in  the  French  Assembly,  it  could  not 
be  disguised  that  although  Jaures,  standing  as  the  champion 
of  Socialism,  had  far  the  best  case,  Clemenceau,  to  the 
sorrow  of  us  all,  got  much  the  better  of  him.  Those  long 
elaborate  rhetorical  periods  in  which  Jaures  delights,  and 
which  delight  his  hearers,  could  not  hold  their  own  against 
the  short  incisive  thrusts  of  a  more  concentrated  style  of 
oratory.  It  was  a  lesson  to  Socialists  not  to  trust  to  rhetoric 
in  hand-to-hand  encounters.  Clemenceau  is  above  all  the 
man  of  the  moment,  ever  equal  to  either  fortune.  It  may  be 
admitted,  also,  that  he  seeks  conflicts  rather  than  in  any 
way  avoids  them. 

It  is  said  that  Clemenceau  had  another  tendency,  not 
quite  so  admirable,  which  on  a  special  occasion  cost  him  a 
good  deal  —  practical  joking.  There  was  a  certain  deputy 
in  the  House  of  Assembly  who  was  desperately  poor  and 
scarcely  able  to  sustain  his  family.  Returning  home  each 
evening,  therefore,  he  took  in  his  pocket  some  of  the  large 
roll  sandwiches  which  lay  on  the  buffet  in  the  House.  Cle- 
menceau, so  they  say,  noted  this  proceeding  and  one  night 


CLEMENCEAU  291 

carefully  removed  from  his  fellow-deputy's  pocket  the 
sandwiches  which  had  been  placed  there.  What  truth 
there  is  in  the  story  I  do  not  pretend  to  say  —  very  likely 
it  is  pure  invention ;  but  in  any  event  the  result  which  was 
attributed  to  this  mauvaise  plaisanterie  was  awkward  for 
Clemenceau.  He  has  never  at  any  time  been  a  rich  man 
and  he  was  on  this  account  desirous  of  being  elected  Presi- 
dent of  the  Chamber,  a  post  to  which  he  was  fully  entitled 
and  to  which  is  attached  a  salary  of  £4000  a  year.  He 
lost  by  only  one  vote  and  this  decisive  vote  was  declared 
to  be  that  of  the  deputy,  otherwise  one  of  his  supporters, 
who  suspected  him  of  having  played  the  trick  of  removing 
the  rolls  needed  for  the  family  supper,  which  he  discovered 
were  missing  when  he  got  home. 

General  Boulanger  was  Clemenceau's  cousin,  and  that 
statesman  used  his  influence  to  get  his  relative  appointed 
War  Minister.  It  is  only  fair  to  remember,  in  view  of  what 
happened  later,  that  this  step  was  quite  justified  in  the  first 
instance;  as  undoubtedly  the  French  army  has  to  thank 
that  ambitious  and  unfortunate  General  for  very  great 
improvements  in  its  supply  of  food  as  well  as  in  its  barrack 
discipline.  But  no  long  time  elapsed  before  the  nominee 
of  the  Radical  Republican  leader  developed,  or  had  thrust 
upon  him,  a  policy  of  reaction  most  dangerous  to  the  State. 
I  was  a  good  deal  in  France  at  the  period  of  Boulanger's 
rise  and  fall  and  nothing  struck  me  more  than  the  indif- 
ference of  the  advanced  party  to  the  danger  of  his  rapidly 
increasing  popularity.  His  overwhelming  successes  in  the 
Nord  and  the  Dordogne  seemed  to  come  upon  the  Republi- 
cans quite  unexpectedly ;  while  my  friend  Dr.  Paul  Brousse, 
as  well  as  M.  Clemenceau  himself,  both  told  me  they  thought 
he  was  on  the  down  grade  when  he  was  on  the  point  of  beat- 
ing the  respectable  bourgeois,  M.  Jacques,  by  a  tremendous 
majority,  for  the  city  of  Paris. 

How  well  I  recall  that  now  almost  forgotten  crisis.     Such 


292  THE   RECORD   OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

a  political  victory  it  was  felt  could  only  end  by  the  General 
proclaiming  himself  either  a  Napoleon,  a  Cromwell,  or  a 
Monk.  This  opinion  was  general.  Another  2nd  of  Decem- 
ber was  looked  forward  to  on  the  night  or  the  morning 
after  the  great  election;  by  the  reactionists  and  royalists 
of  all  shades  of  opinion  with  open  rejoicing,  by  the  Repub- 
licans with  ill-disguised  trepidation.  I  was  in  the  crowd 
outside  Durand's  Restaurant  where  Boulanger  was  feting 
his  triumph  with  his  friends.  Whether  he  had  made  any 
preparations  for  a  coup  and  let  the  opportunity  slip  from 
sheer  lack  of  determination  or  too  much  easy  self-indulgence 
I  do  not  pretend  to  know.  But  the  Home  Secretary  of  the 
day,  M.  Constans,  a  most  resolute  and  unscrupulous  man, 
had  taken  full  precautions  on  the  other  side,  and  Boulanger 
and  his  friends  would  assuredly  not  have  reached  the  Elysee 
without  a  very  bloody  struggle  against  the  Republican  troops, 
whom  M.  Constans  had  concentrated  around  that  palace. 

Hour  after  hour  passed.  The  strain  of  waiting  became 
almost  intolerable.  The  crowd  itself  seemed  to  lose  patience. 
At  two  o'clock  it  is  said  the  watching  Minister  felt  con- 
vinced that  whatever  chance  Boulanger  possessed  had 
evaporated  and  went  off  contentedly  to  bed;  whither  as  a 
humble  spectator  I  had,  out  of  sheer  weariness,  retired  an 
hour  before.  From  that  night  onwards  Boulanger's  career 
seemed  to  me  the  saddest  of  modern  times.  What  a  mourn- 
ful descent,  slowly  and  hopelessly,  having  the  qualities  of 
his  defects  as  well  as  the  defects  of  his  qualities,  from  being 
the  idol  of  the  people  and  the  triumphant  member  for 
Paris  to  the  heart-broken  and  worn-out  adventurer  com- 
mitting suicide  over  his  mistress's  grave.  "  Character  is 
destiny,"  says  Carlyle.  Yet  I  have  always  felt  sympathy 
for  poor  Boulanger,  much  as  I  should  have  rejoiced  to  hear 
that  he  had  been  shot,  if  he  had  attempted  to  destroy  the 
Republic  on  the  morrow  of  his  great  political  victory.  He 
fell  a  victim  to  woman  and  a  soft  disposition.  Did  not 


CLEMENCEAU  293 

Disraeli  say  that  a  politician  should  have  for  his  wife  or 
his  mistress  one  whom  he  returned  to  at  night  with  repug- 
nance and  left  in  the  morning  with  delight? 

It  was  at  this  time  I  had  a  conversation  with  M.  Cle- 
menceau  in  his  flat  in  the  Rue  Clement  Marot  which  made 
a  great  impression  upon  me  then  and  afterwards.  I  had 
been  talking  at  length  with  my  friends  of  the  Socialist  sec- 
tions, and  it  certainly  seemed  to  me  that  the  time  had  come 
when  this  formidable  political  controversialist  and  leader 
should  himself  take  control  of  the  French  Government  in 
the  transition  stage,  by  consolidating  in  office  the  really 
powerful  Radical  forces  which  he  led  and  making  ready  to 
hold  out  his  hand  to  the  growing  Socialist  power.  A  man 
who  had  overthrown  no  fewer  than  eighteen  administrations 
incurred  by  doing  so  a  heavy  responsibility  himself. 

How  many  more  ministerial  scalps  did  this  terrible 
Apache  "brave"  desire  to  hang  on  his  political  girdle? 
The  question  was  commonly  asked,  and  Clemenceau  himself 
was  the  only  man  who  could  effectively  answer  it. 

Seated  comfortably  in  his  delightful  library,  surrounded 
by  splendid  Japanese  works  of  art,  of  which  at  this  time 
he  was  an  ardent  collector,  M.  Clemenceau  spoke  very  freely 
indeed.  Of  course,  he  knew  very  well  that  I  was  no  mere 
interviewer  for  Press  purposes  and,  indeed,  I  have  always 
made  it  a  rule  to  keep  such  conversations,  except  perhaps 
for  permitted  indiscretions  here  and  there,  entirely  to 
myself.  Seeing  that  M.  Clemenceau  at  seventy  is  to  all 
intents  and  purposes  as  alert  and  vivacious  and  in  every 
sense  active  as  he  was  more  than  twenty  years  ago,  there 
is  no  need  for  me  to  enlarge  upon  his  quick  and  almost 
abrupt  delivery,  his  apt  remarks  and  illustrations,  his  bright, 
clever,  vigorous  face  and  gestures.  I  put  it  to  him  that 
Socialism  was  the  basis  of  the  coming  political  party  in 
France  and  that,  vehement  individualist  as  he  might  be 
himself,  it  was  impossible  for  him  to  resist  permanently  the 


294  THE  RECORD   OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

current  of  the  time,  or  to  remain  merely  a  supremely  power- 
ful critic  and  organiser  of  overthrow.  Sooner  or  later  he 
must  succumb  to  the  inevitable  and  take  his  seat  as  Presi- 
dent of  Council,  and  to  do  this  with  any  hope  of  success  or 
usefulness,  he  would  have  to  rely  in  an  increasing  degree 
upon  Socialist  and  semi-Socialist  support. 

To  this  Clemenceau  answered  that  he  was  quite  contented 
with  his  existing  position;  that  he  had  no  wish  to  enter 
upon  office  with  its  harassing  responsibilities  and  corrupt- 
ing influence;  while  as  to  Socialism  that  could  never  make 
way  in  France  in  his  day.  "Looking  only  at  the  towns," 
he  said,  "you  may  think  otherwise,  though  even  there  I 
consider  the  progress  of  Socialism  is  overrated.  But  the 
towns  do  not  govern  France.  The  overwhelming  majority 
of  French  voters  are  country  voters.  France  means  rural 
France  and  the  peasantry  of  France  will  never  be  Socialists. 
Nobody  can  know  them  better  than  my  family  and  I  know 
them.  Landed  proprietors  ourselves  —  my  father's  pas- 
sion for  buying  land  to  pay  him  3  per  cent  with  borrowed 
money  for  which  he  had  to  pay  4  per  cent  would  have 
finally  ruined  him,  but  that  our  wholesome  French  law 
permits  gentle  interference  in  such  a  case  —  we  have  ever 
lived  with  and  among  the  peasantry.  We  have  been 
doctors  from  generation  to  generation  and  have  doctored 
them  gratuitously,  as  I  do  myself  both  in  country  and  in 
town.  I  have  seen  them  very  close  in  birth  and  in  death, 
in  sickness  and  in  health,  in  betrothal  and  in  marriage,  in 
poverty  and  in  well-being,  and  all  the  time  their  one  idea 
is  property;  to  possess,  to  own,  to  provide  a  good  portion 
for  the  daughter,  to  secure  a  good  and  well  dot-ed  wife  for 
the  son.  Always  property,  ownership,  possession,  work, 
thrift,  acquisition,  individual  gain.  Socialism  can  never 
take  root  in  such  a  soil  as  this.  North  or  south  it  is  just 
the  same.  Preach  nationalisation  of  the  land  in  a  French 
village,  and  you  would  barely  escape  with  your  life,  if  the 


CLEMENCEAU    .  295 

peasants  understood  what  you  meant.  Come  with  me  for 
a  few  weeks'  trip  through  rural  France,  and  you  will  soon 
understand  the  hopelessness  of  Socialism  here.  It  will  en- 
counter a  personal  fanaticism  stronger  than  its  own.  Your 
Socialists  are  men  of  the  town ;  they  do  not  understand  the 
men  and  women  of  the  country." 

Imagine  all  this  put  with  a  life  and  directness  which  I 
do  not  pretend  to  have  reproduced  in  these  sentences  and 
it  is  easy  to  understand  the  effect  this  statement  had  upon 
me.  "But,"  I  urged,  "if  you  render  yourself  the  impossible 
man,  the  one  person  whom  reactionaries  and  revolutionaries 
alike  are  anxious  to  get  rid  of,  is  it  not  possible  that  the 
extremes  will  combine  against  you  and  oust  you  from  your 
seat  in  the  Var?"  "Let  them  try  that  and  I  don't  envy 
them  their  undertaking,"  was  his  retort.  I  was  speaking 
without  any  knowledge ;  but  strange  to  say  this  is  precisely 
what  occurred. 

Backed  up  by  the  persistent  personal  attacks  of  the 
Petit  Journal  and  the  unpopularity  engendered  by  malig- 
nant misrepresentation  of  his  friendship  for  England  and 
calumnies  about  the  Panama  Canal,  the  Catholics  and 
Socialists  actually  did  combine  and  turned  Clemenceau  out 
of  a  constituency  which  he  was  justified  in  thinking  would 
be  his  for  life.  Anticipating  events  again  somewhat,  I 
remember  when  I  wrote  and  said  I  was  very  sorry  he  had 
been  defeated  his  letter  in  reply  showed  that  he  was  very 
bitter  against  Socialists  for  having  taken  any  part  in  his 
reverse,  and  even  brought  a  little  of  his  annoyance  to  bear 
upon  me. 

Our  conversation  on  this  occasion  was  brought  to  a 
close  in  rather  an  amusing  way.  A  card  was  handed  to 
him  "W.  T.  Stead."  "Shall  we  have  him  in?"  asked 
Clemenceau  courteously.  "Certainly,"  I  answered,  and  Cle- 
menceau advanced  to  the  door,  I  following  just  behind  him 
expecting  to  see  that  well-known  personage.  It  was  not 


296  THE  RECORD   OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

Mr.  Stead,  however,  who  entered  but  one  of  his  young  men. 
No  sooner  did  his  eye  light  upon  me  than  to  our  astonish- 
ment he  drew  back  a  pace  or  so.  "You  know  Mr.  Hynd- 
man,"  said  Clemenceau.  "Yes/7  said  the  new-comer 
shaking  his  head  solemnly,  "I  should  think  I  do  know 
Mr.  Hyndman,  and  it  is  no  thanks  to  him  that  I  am  un- 
injured or  even  alive  here  at  this  moment:  I  was  in  the 
Riding  School  the  other  night  and  I  think  myself  lucky  to 
have  got  away  with  my  life."  I  couldn't  help  laughing. 
"Ho,  ho,"  I  gasped  out,  "you  must  have  been  at  the  re- 
porters' table/'  and  I  laughed  more.  I  then  took  leave  of 
M.  Clemenceau  and  left  the  explanation  of  both  the  scare 
and  the  laughter  to  his  visitor. 

What  had  happened  was  this :  —  Not  long  before  we  had 
had  the  demonstration  known  as  the  "Bloody  Sunday" 
meeting,  when  the  unfortunate  man  Linnell  was  killed  and 
Burns  and  Cunninghame  Graham  were  haled  into  custody 
for  having  made  an  attempt  to  capture  Trafalgar  Square 
from  the  police  and  soldiery.  They  had  been  sentenced  to 
a  month's  imprisonment  and  on  their  release  a  great  meet- 
ing of  welcome  was  held,  got  up  chiefly  by  Mr.  Stead,  in 
the  Riding  School  near  Bryanston  Square.  Michael  Davitt 
was  in  the  chair,  and  all  the  London  Radical  members  had 
been  invited  to  attend  and  were  present  on  the  platform. 
The  place,  which  would  hold  fully  5000  people,  was  packed 
to  suffocation,  and  there  was  only  one  small  door  at  the 
end  by  which  to  get  either  in  or  out. 

At  first  all  went  well  and  the  proceedings  were  most 
harmonious.  I  had  gone  there  without  having  the  slightest 
intention  of  speaking  and  sat  quite  at  the  back  of  the  plat- 
form, where  I  thought  nobody  would  see  me.  However, 
after  Davitt,  Burns,  Graham,  Stead  and  two  or  three  Par- 
liament men  had  spoken  there  arose  a  cry  for  me.  Davitt 
very  properly  —  for  my  name  was  not  announced  —  refused 
to  call  upon  me.  Then  the  shouting  grew  louder  and  more 


CLEMENCEAU  297 

and  more  insistent.  Davitt  looked  round  to  me  and  I 
shook  my  head.  At  last  I  was  obliged  to  come  forward 
and  address  the  crowded  hall.  I  began  peacefully  enough; 
but  I  had  not  spoken  for  more  than  five  minutes  or  so, 
when  the  sight  of  those  twelve  Radical  M.P.'s  who  had 
never  done  anything  for  the  unemployed,  nor  helped  our 
fight  for  free  speech  in  any  way,  stirred  my  anger,  and 
turning  upon  them  I  asked,  "What  on  earth  are  these  men 
doing  here?"  Then  I  commented  upon  their  individual 
shortcomings  and  was  getting  on  very  well  with,  at  any 
rate,  the  more  advanced  portion  of  the  audience,  when 
suddenly  an  enraged  Radical  crying  out  "you  infernal  fire- 
brand'7 rushed  at  me  with  the  evident  intention  of  assault- 
ing me.  Thereupon,  before  I  could  do  anything,  one  of 
our  people  attacked  him,  and  catching  him  a  blow  full  on 
the  jaw  with  his  fist  knocked  him  clean  off  the  platform  on 
to  the  reporters'  table. 

Then  there  were  what  the  French  call  "movements  in 
various  senses"  throughout  the  Hall;  Social-Democrats 
jumping  over  the  benches  and  coming  to  the  front  to  pro- 
tect me,  those  whom  they  trampled  upon  objecting  to  these 
methods  of  intervention  very  vigorously.  An  indescribable 
hubbub  ensued.  A  free  fight  raged  on  every  side  of  the 
reporters,  who  themselves  were  in  danger  of  serious  injury. 
From  one  end  of  the  Hall  to  the  other  turmoil  and  dis- 
turbance reigned  supreme.  I  have  been  in  a  good  many 
rough  and  tumble  affrays  in  the  course  of  my  life,  but  never 
did  I  see  anything  much  more  dangerous  than  this.  For 
as  I  have  said  there  was  only  one  small  door  at  the  very  end 
of  the  Riding  School,  and  how  the  five  thousand  people  were 
to  get  through  it  without  loss  of  life  nobody  could  tell,  the 
personal  altercations  and  fisty-cuff  encounters  being  so  very 
general  and  the  pressure  towards  the  sole  exit  so  very  heavy. 

I  take  it  that  this  scene  presented  itself  to  the  mind  of 
Mr.  Stead's  young  man  when  he  espied  me  behind  M.  Cle- 


298     THE  RECORD  OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

menceau  and  remembered  how  very  vigorous  the  struggle 
had  been  all  round  him.  Happily  in  the  end  no  bones 
were  broken  and  no  lives  were  lost.  The  Social-Democrats 
made  a  circle  round  me  and  got  me  out  safe  and  sound; 
but  for  some  years  afterwards  Radicals  who  were  present 
seemed  to  have  an  objection  to  being  on  the  same  platform 
as  myself,  and  even  cherished  a  certain  prejudice  against 
me  as  a  person  who  had  no  regard  for  the  general  comfort. 

On  leaving  M.  Clemenceau,  with  my  mind  full  of  his 
predictions  about  the  future  of  Socialism  in  France  and 
the  impossibility  of  converting  peasants  to  our  views,  I 
went  off  to  Dr.  Paul  Brousse  and  put  to  him  M.  Clemen- 
ceau's  pessimist  opinion.  Brousse  was  at  this  time  the  leader 
of  the  Possibilists  and  certainly  no  thorough-going  Marxist. 
But  it  seemed  to  me  his  economic  outlook  was  sound  enough. 
" Socialism  is  quite  sure  to  make  way  in  our  towns,"  he  said, 
"as  the  great  industry  spreads  and  the  small  producers  and 
small  distributers  feel  the  pressure  of  the  competition  from 
big  centralised  factories  and  stores.  Everywhere  the  tend- 
ency is  manifestly  in  that  direction,  though  as  you  know 
I  do  not  fully  share  the  opinions  of  Guesde  and  Lafargue 
or  your  own.  As  to  the  country  we  shall  make  way  there 
too,  though  in  a  different  way.  Of  course,  Clemenceau  is 
right  enough  when  he  says  that  the  peasants  are  devoted 
to  property  and  that  to  preach  nationalisation  of  the  land 
in  the  villages  would  be  suicidal.  But  we  shall  gain  ground 
all  the  same,  and  our  methods  of  spreading  our  views  must 
be  modified  to  suit  each  district. 

"Thus  we  have  had  a  terrible  attack  of  the  phylloxera 
in  the  wine  districts.  Ask  the  peasants  where  the  disease 
began  they  will  tell  you  'in  the  vineyards  of  the  great  pro- 
prietors/ 'And  who  took  the  measures  for  checking  the 
disease  and  discovered  the  remedy ?;  'The  State':  they 
know  that.  'And  who  benefited  first  and  most  by  the 
action  ^f  the  State ?'  'The  great  owners  who  introduced 


CLEMENCEAU  299 

the  disease.7  So  we  can  show  by  actual  example  that  col- 
lective action  may  be  most  advantageous,  but  that  under 
the  existing  conditions  the  rich  chiefly  benefit. 

"Then,  again,  machinery  and  manures  are  becoming  in 
many  districts  even  more  valuable  to  the  peasant  working 
his  own  land  than  the  land  itself;  but  he  has  at  present 
great  difficulty  in  procuring  a  sufficiency  of  either.  Put  it 
to  him  whether  the  supply  of  both  by  the  Commune  would 
not  place  him  in  a  better  position,  even  if  others  gained  as 
well  as  himself,  and  he  would  at  once  admit  that  collective 
organisation  in  this  direction  might  do  great  good.  The 
word  ' Socialism '  need  never  be  used  at  all;  but  the  ideas 
of  national  and  communal  organisation  and  administration 
would  soon  find  their  road  into  his  mind.  In  this  way  the 
peasant's  conception  of  the  sanctity  of  private  and  the 
curse  of  public  ownership  would  gradually  be  shaken,  and 
he  would  be  on  the  path  to  practical  Socialism  before  he 
knew  what  was  going  on.7' 

I  have  always  thought  that  this  exposition  of  Brousse's 
as  to  what  might  and  ought  to  be  done  was  quite  admir- 
able, and  though  events  have  not  taken  precisely  the  course 
he  indicated  they  have  certainly  entirely  falsified  M.  Cle- 
menceau's  forecast,  as  he  himself  came  to  admit.  Indeed 
he  said  plainly  afterwards  that  in  1889,  when  he  talked 
with  me,  he  had  not  declared,  as  I  hold  he  did,  that  Social- 
ism could  never  make  way  in  France  but  that  a  Socialist 
Government  could  never  be  possible  in  France;  "I  do  not 
say  so  now"  (1906)  he  added. 

What  sudden  changes  occur  in  life.  In  that  year  I  asked 
Clemenceau,  Jaur£s  and  Vailiant  to  lunch  to  meet  Lady 
Warwick,  who  was  then  in  Paris,  at  Margu6ry's.  Vailiant 
could  not  come,  but  Jaures  and  Clemenceau,  who  were  then 
very  good  friends,  both  came  and  a  most  delightful  con- 
versation we  had.  Clemenceau  was,  as  always,  spontane- 
ously brilliant  and  agreeable,  and  Jaures  was  in  his  own 


300  THE  RECORD   OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

way  equally  pleasant.  I  specially  remember  two  things  in 
connection  with  that  luncheon.  Clemenceau  would  not 
have  it  that  anything  really  valuable  could  come  out  of 
the  English  proletariat.  They  were  incapable  of  any  high 
ideals  for  their  own  class.  "In  short/ '  said  he,  "la  classe 
ouvriere  en  Angleterre  est  une  classe  bourgeoise";  and  so 
far,  I  am  compelled  to  admit,  with  the  deepest  regret,  this 
caustic  appreciation  of  my  toiling  countrymen  is  in  the 
main  correct. 

As  we  drove  away  from  the  famous  restaurant  we  spoke 
of  Clemenceau  almost,  from  the  political  point  of  view,  in 
the  same  sense  as  Heine  referred  to  Alfred  de  Musset,  "Ce 
jeune  homme"  —  Clemenceau  at  sixty-seven  was  quite 
young  —  "d'un  si  beau  passeV'  It  seemed  impossible  that 
with  all  his  great  and.  universally  recognised  ability  he 
should  again  come  right  to  the  front.  Yet  within  six  months, 
having  arrived  at  an  understanding  with  M.  Rouvier,  this 
remarkable  man  was  virtually  master  of  France,  and  shortly 
thereafter  President  of  Council  and  of  course  Premier. 
From  this  position  he  dislodged  himself  quite  unnecessarily 
in  a  fit  of  temper.  "I  went  in  with  an  umbrella  and  I 
come  out  with  a  stick/7  said  he  as  he  left  his  official  quarters. 
Always  short  of  money,  he  never  failed  in  humour  at  any 
period  of  his  life,  and  at  the  height  of  his  power  and  repu- 
tation was  as  thoroughly  bon  gar$on  as  when  he  was  in  a 
position  of  "  greater  freedom  and  less  responsibility." 

When  also  he  took  MM.  Briand,  Viviani  and  Millerand 
into  his  Cabinet  he  showed  clearly  to  the  world  at  large 
how  completely  he  had  changed  his  mind  as  to  the  need 
for  conciliating  some  portion  of  the  Socialist  forces  in  order 
to  carry  on  a  stable  Republican  Government  on  advanced 
lines.  However  much,  too,  I  may  object  to  such  alliances 
it  betokened  a  certain  wideness  of  mind  and  political  sa- 
gacity for  a  statesman  of  Clemenceau's  strong  individualist 
opinions  thus  to  accept  the  growth  of  collectivist  doctrine. 


CLEMENCEAU  301 

One  important  portion  of  M.  Clemenceau's  adventurous 
career  I  have  not  spoken  of.  It  is  that  in  which  he  first 
made  his  place  as  the  ablest  journalist  in  France.  Looking 
back  on  the  Dreyfus  affair,  which  I  may  treat  a  little  more 
in  detail  when  speaking  of  my  friends  Liebknecht  and 
Jaures,  it  is  scarcely  possible,  even  for  Englishmen  who 
were  in  France  at  the  time,  to  recall  the  almost  inconceiv- 
able fury  which  raged  against  those  who  took  the  side  of 
the  Jew  officer.  Assassination  and  massacre  were  in  the 
air.  The  whole  city  of  Paris  palpitated  with  conflicting 
emotions.  On  the  day  when  Henry's  suicide,  or  murder, 
became  known  my  wife  and  I  happened  to  be  shopping. 
Wherever  we  went  it  seemed  as  if  some  great  domestic 
affliction  had  fallen  upon  the  people  we  saw. 

But  even  this  was  a  quiet  episode  compared  to  the  ex- 
citement at  other  critical  periods  of  this  famous  case. 
Throughout,  Clemenceau  was  in  the  very  forefront  of  the 
fight.  His  articles  day  by  day  were  more  formidable  than 
dynamite  shells  to  the  anti-semitic  and  reactionary  elements 
over  against  him,  and  among  the  gallant  band  who  were 
fighting  against  the  full  fury  of  combined  militarism  and 
priestcraft  there  was  no  such  telling  combatant  as  he;  not 
even  Jaures  in  the  Petite  Republique  writing  up  to  nearly 
the  level  of  Clemenceau  in  I'Aurore.  The  trial  of  Zola  was 
perhaps  the  hottest  period  of  all  that  long  and  violent 
conflict.  The  court  smelt  of  suppressed  slaughter.  Massa- 
cre had  been,  it  is  said,  resolved  upon  if  Zola  had  been  ac- 
quitted, and  Clemenceau  told  me  himself  —  and  he  does  not 
know  what  fear  is  —  that  he  was  quite  certain  that,  had 
Zola  not  been  condemned,  not  a  prominent  Dreyfusard  in 
the  court  or  in  the  corridors  would  have  escaped  with  his 
life.  A  list  of  the  men  to  be  " removed"  had  been  drawn 
up,  and  if  a  foreigner  who  knows  Paris  pretty  well  may 
judge  at  all  of  what  was  going  on,  I  can  have  no  doubt 
that  at  more  than  one  other  moment  the  butchery  of  Drey- 


302  THE  RECORD   OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

fus's  prominent  supporters,  and  consequent  Civil  War  of  a 
desperate  character,  was  quite  within  the  bounds  of  pos- 
sibility. 

Well,  I  have  not  forgotten  that  through  all  this  time  of 
stress  and  strain  Clemenceau  never  faltered  for  an  instant. 
Whether  it  was  wise  of  some  of  the  Socialists  to  throw 
themselves  so  completely  into  the  fray,  to  the  exclusion  for 
the  time  being  of  almost  all  else,  is  a  debatable  point.  But 
when  we  remember  how  stoutly  Clemenceau  fought  side 
by  side  with  men  who  at  that  time  were  no  friends  of  his, 
and  certainly  greatly  to  his  own  disadvantage,  it  seems  to 
me  that  a  less  intolerant  view  might  well  be  taken  of  his 
later  doings.  To  my  mind  he  is  always  a  great  Frenchman 
who  has  done  credit  to  his  race. 


CHAPTER  XX 

ECONOMICS  AND   JOURNALISM 

IN  the  earlier  period  we  entered  upon  an  investigation, 
exclusively  conducted  by  the  Democratic  Federation,  as  to 
the  condition  of  the  people  in  the  working-class  districts  of 
London,  in  order  to  determine  how  large  a  proportion  of  the 
wage-earners  were  receiving  as  their  weekly  remuneration 
an  amount  of  payment  insufficient,  under  the  conditions 
in  which  they  lived,  to  keep  themselves  in  proper  physical 
health  for  the  work  they  had  to  do.  This  inquiry  was  con- 
ducted very  systematically  and  very  carefully  in  different 
quarters  of  London,  typical  working-class  streets  and  build- 
ings being  taken  as  the  tests  in  each  case.  We  were  most 
careful  to  avoid  exaggeration  in  every  possible  way,  and 
went  so  far,  in  order  to  keep  on  the  safe  side,  as  to  make 
deductions  from  the  percentage  of  those  we  had  finally 
settled  as  being  insufficiently  fed  and  clothed  to  prevent 
them  from  physically  deteriorating  on  the  standard  of  life 
they  were  able  to  command,  even  in  those  days  of  low 
prices,  for  actual  necessaries.  The  figures  thus  obtained 
we  marshalled  as  well  as  we  could  with  the  means  at  our 
command  and  we  published  them  in  various  ways.  We 
arrived  at  the  conclusion  that  no  fewer  than  25  per  cent  of 
the  workers  of  the  metropolis  were  in  receipt  of  weekly 
wages  upon  which  it  was  quite  impossible  for  them  to  live, 
not  to  say  in  any  reasonable  comfort,  but  in  such  wise  as 
to  keep  themselves  and  their  wives  and  children  from  slow 
but  sure  physical  deterioration.  These  statistics  and  the 
statements  and  criticisms  with  which  we  accompanied  them 

303 


304  THE  RECORD   OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

attracted  a  great  deal  of  attention,  and  of  course  we  Social- 
ists were,  as  usual,  denounced  as  deliberate  falsifiers  of 
facts  and  exaggerators  of  the  poverty  of  the  mass  of  the 
people. 

One  day,  however,  Mr.  Charles  Booth,  then  quite  un- 
known to  me,  came  to  our  house  with  a  letter  of  introduc- 
tion from  Greenwood,  who  was  editing  the  St.  James  Ga- 
zette. Mr.  Booth  was  very  frank.  He  told  me  plainly 
that  in  his  opinion  we  had  grossly  overstated  the  case.  He 
admitted  there  was  great  poverty  in  the  metropolis  among 
the  workers,  but  he  maintained  that  to  say  that  there 
were  not  fewer  than  25  per  cent  who  existed  below  the  line 
of  reasonable  subsistence  was  to  make  a  statement  which 
could  not  possibly  be  substantiated  over  the  whole  area.  I 
knew  how  thoroughly  we  had  done  our  work  —  I  think  I 
may  claim  for  myself  that  I  have  never  yet  been  shown 
to  be  wrong  in  my  statistics,  even  when  handling  them 
alone,  while  here  I  had  the  help  of  capable  friends  —  and 
I  at  once  said  I  was  quite  sure  that  the  more  thorough  any 
examination  might  be  the  more  completely  would  our 
figures  and  statements  generally  be  verified.  Mr.  Booth, 
who,  by  the  way,  is  a  Conservative,  again  assured  me  that 
he  felt  quite  certain  we  were  wrong,  and  then  told  me  that 
he  himself  intended  to  make,  at  his  own  expense,  an  elabo- 
rate inquiry  into  the  condition  of  the  workers  of  London : 
the  wages  they  received  and  the  amount  of  sustenance 
they  could  obtain  for  the  money  remuneration  they  were 
paid,  he  being  quite  certain  he  would  prove  us  to  be  wrong. 
I  welcomed  this  as  a  very  useful  thing  to  do,  and  con- 
gratulated Mr.  Booth  upon  his  public-spirited  attempt  to 
establish  the  truth  beyond  all  question  by  putting  the  real 
facts  and  the  deductions  from  them  in  such  a  manner  and 
on  such  a  scale  as  to  carry  conviction  to  all. 

This  inquiry  was  set  on  foot  and  carried  out  most  minutely 
at  Mr.  Booth's  own  cost.  It  was  entered  upon,  as  I  say, 


ECONOMICS  AND  JOURNALISM  305 

with  the  idea  on  Mr.  Booth's  part  that  we  had  very  con- 
siderably exaggerated  the  proportion  of  the  working  people 
who  lived  below  the  line  of  decent  subsistence;  Mr.  Booth 
even  going  as  far  as  to  denounce  me  in  a  quiet  way  for 
putting  such  erroneous,  and  as  he  then  termed  them  "  in- 
cendiary/' statements  before  the  people.  But  what  was 
the  result  of  Mr.  Booth's  historic  investigation,  which  has 
rightly  gained  for  him  international  recognition  abroad  and 
very  high  honours  at  home?  It  was  established  conclu- 
sively by  this  long  and  expensive  search  into  the  conditions 
of  the  wage-earners  in  every  part  of  the  metropolis  that, 
so  far  from  the  Socialists  of  the  Social  Democratic  Federa- 
tion having  overestimated  the  numbers  of  the  hopelessly 
poverty-stricken,  we  had  erred  considerably  in  cutting 
down  our  original  figures.  It  appeared  that  instead  of  25 
per  cent  of  the  working  class  receiving  wages  insufficient  to 
keep  themselves  and  their  families  in  reasonable  physical 
efficiency,  30  per  cent  and  more  were  sunk  in  this  slough 
of  economic  and  social  despond.  That  was  the  outcome  of 
Mr.  Booth's  Commission  of  Inquiry,  as  all  the  world  knows, 
and  the  proportion  of  starving  producers  in  the  metropolis 
is  still  greater  to-day. 

Almost  precisely  the  same  proportion  of  underfed  people 
was  found  by  Mr.  Rowntree  in  the  Cathedral  City  of  York 
as  the  result  of  a  similar  investigation  there.  But,  of 
course,  in  this  case  as  in  all  others,  the  Socialists  got  no 
credit  for  having  called  attention  to  the  facts  and  forced  on 
the  inquiry  by  their  original  investigations.  Far  from  it. 
They  were  abused  still  more,  and  even  Mr.  Booth  himself 
had  not  the  courtesy  at  the  time  to  inform  me  of  the  result 
of  his  inquiry,  or  to  withdraw  the  imputations  he  had  per- 
sonally made  upon  me  and  the  body  to  which  I  belong. 
Nor  has  he  ever  done  so  to  this  day.  But  I  am  quite  ac- 
customed to  that  sort  of  treatment  from  men  who  build 
upon  the  foundations  we  lay. 


306  THE  RECORD   OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

We  had  now  arrived  at  the  point  where  we  thought  a 
Socialist  weekly  paper  was  a  necessity.  I  was  personally 
by  no  means  so  convinced  of  the  advisability  of  taking 
upon  us  this  serious  responsibility  as  some  of  the  others 
were,  and  Morris,  I  judge,  doubted  whether  the  movement 
was  ripe  for  this  venture  even  more  than  I  did.  At  any 
rate,  he  was  not  disposed  to  risk  any  money  at  that  time 
on  the  establishment  of  a  Socialist  journal.  However,  it 
was  decided  we  should  start  one,  and,  our  friend  Edward 
Carpenter  having  provided  a  sum  of  money,  the  thing  was 
done.  I  had  not  the  very  slightest  intention  when  we 
began  of  becoming  the  editor.  Both  my  wife  and  myself 
knew  what  the  result  must  be  to  me  in  our  then  position, 
and  it  was  agreed  Charles  Fitzgerald  should  undertake  the 
work.  Fitzgerald  was  a  retired  army  officer  who  had  acted 
as  Special  Correspondent  for  the  Daily  News;  but  from  one 
cause  or  another  the  best  writers  we  had  would  not  work 
under  his  editorship,  and  I  was  practically  forced  to  take 
the  place  at  once  or  give  up  the  venture. 

Thus  began  the  most  unfortunate  undertaking  for  myself 
personally  that  I  ever  entered  upon,  and  when  I  think  of 
all  the  ability  and  energy  and  sacrifice  which  others  as 
well  as  myself  have  thrown  into  Justice  during  the  past 
twenty-seven  years  I  am  bound  to  recognise  that,  invalu- 
able service  as  the  paper  has  rendered  at  times,  we  should 
have  done  far  better  to  have  expended  our  money  and 
enthusiasm  in  other  directions.  It  was  one  of  those  fatal 
mistakes  that  cannot  be  remedied  and  which  engender  a 
sort  of  mania  of  obstinacy:  the  more  it  cost  us  to  keep  it 
up  the  more  determined  we  were  to  keep  it  on.  The  won- 
der is  that  a  journal  bitterly  hostile  to  the  dominant  class 
and  entirely  without  advertisements  should  have  lasted  so 
long  as  it  has.  Nothing  but  the  determination  of  its  present 
editor,  and  the  persistence  of  the  little  band  of  writers  who 
stuck  to  it  could  have  kept  it  going  all  these  years. 


ECONOMICS  AND  JOURNALISM  307 

We  started  well.  Morris,  Shaw,  Hubert  Bland  and  Mrs. 
Bland,  Joynes,  Salt,  Champion,  Helen  Taylor  and  others 
made  up  a  good  staff;  the  paper  itself  was  well  printed, 
and  the  whole  effect  of  it  was  good.  But  the  trouble  was 
with  the  circulation.  We  did  not  meet  a  long-felt  want 
that's  certain.  In  fact,  well  as  it  might  be  written,  it  was 
a  purely  propaganda  sheet,  dealing  with  questions  that 
the  mass  of  mankind  did  not  wish  to  have  thrust  upon  them. 
Those  were  the  days  when  none  of  us  were  above  doing  any- 
thing. We  distributed  bills,  took  collections,  bawled  our- 
selves hoarse  at  street-corners,  and  sold  Justice  down  Fleet 
Street  and  the  Strand.  This  last  was  really  a  most  ex- 
traordinary venture. 

It  was  a  curious  scene.  Morris  in  his  soft  hat  and  blue 
suit,  Champion,  Frost  and  Joynes  in  the  morning  garments 
of  the  well-to-do,  several  working  men  comrades,  and  I 
myself  wearing  the  new  frock-coat  in  which  Shaw  said  I 
was  born,  with  a  tall  hat  and  good  gloves,  all  earnestly 
engaged  in  selling  a  penny  Socialist  paper  during  the  busiest 
time  of  the  day  in  London's  busiest  thoroughfare.  Outside 
of  the  Salvation  Army  nothing  of  that  sort  had  been  done 
up  to  that  time.  There  could  be  no  doubt  as  to  the  earnest- 
ness of  the  men  who  thus  made  themselves  ridiculous  to  all 
those  who  had  never  felt  disposed  to  run  any  risk  of  that 
kind  for  any  reason  whatever. 

And  of  course  there  were  some  amusing  episodes  in  those 
early  beginnings.  For  example,  there  were  appearing  in 
Justice  in  the  first  numbers  some  more  or  less  funny  jokes 
written  by  the  editor  entitled  "  Needles  in  hay."  There 
were  those  who  actually  laughed  at  these  well-meant  efforts 
at  being  amusing.  Even  the  writer  himself  thought  they 
were  not  so  bad.  But  suddenly  there  came  a  letter  from 
one  of  the  oldest  members  of  the  body,  whose  faculty  for 
criticising  other  people  has  always  been  greatly  in  excess 
of  his  own  power  of  performance,  in  which  he  was  good 


308  THE  RECORD  OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

enough  to  speak  very  highly  of  Justice  and  its  literary  merit 
generally.  "But,"  he  wound  up,  "who  is  that  damned 
fool  who  writes  ' Needles  in  hay'?"  As  the  writer  of  that 
sentence  had  many  of  the  attributes  of  a  foolometer  the 
"needles"  ceased  to  encumber  the  provender  and  appeared 
no  more.  But  the  circulation  of  our  paper  did  not  leap  up 
in  consequence.  Yet  as  I  look  back  at  those  early  files  of 
Justice  I  see  far  less  to  regret  than  might  have  been  ex- 
pected. Some  of  the  articles,  indeed,  would  well  bear  re- 
printing to-day,  and  I  have  always  thought  the  following 
fable  of  "The  Monkey  and  the  Nuts,"  one  of  the  most  tell- 
ing and  brilliant  things  of  its  kind  ever  done  in  Socialist 
literature.  I  have  forgotten  the  name  of  the  writer. 

FABLES  FOR  THE  TIMES 

THE   MONKEYS   AND   THE   NUTS 

A  Colony  of  monkeys,  having  gathered  a  store  of  nuts  for  the 
winter,  begged  their  Wise  Ones  to  distribute  them.  The  Wise 
Ones  reserved  a  good  half  for  themselves,  and  distributed  the  re- 
mainder amongst  the  rest  of  the  community,  giving  to  some 
twenty  nuts,  to  others  ten,  to  others  five,  and  to  a  considerable 
number  none.  Now,  when  those  to  whom  twenty  had  been  given 
complained  that  the  Wise  Ones  had  kept  so  many  for  themselves 
the  Wise  Ones  answered,  "Peace,  foolish  ones,  are  ye  not  much 
better  off  than  those  who  have  ten?  "  And  they  were  pacified. 
And  to  those  who  objected,  having  only  ten,  they  said,  "Be 
satisfied,  are  there  not  many  who  have  but  five?"  and  they 
kept  silence.  And  they  answered  those  who  had  five,  saying, 
"Nay,  but  see  ye  not  the  number  who  have  none?  "  Now  when 
these  last  made  complaint  of  the  unjust  division  and  demanded  a 
share,  the  Wise  Ones  stepped  forward  and  exclaimed  to  those  who 
had  twenty,  and  ten,  and  five,  "Behold  the  wickedness  of  these 
monkeys.  Because  they  have  no  nuts  they  are  dissatisfied,  and 
would  fain  rob  you  of  those  which  are  yours  ! " 

And  they  all  fell  on  the  portionless  monkeys  and  beat  them 
sorely.  Moral.  The  selfishness  of  the  moderately  well-to-do 
blinds  them  to  the  rapacity  of  the  rich. 

ULTILE  DULCI. 

The  general  policy  of  the  paper,  then,  was  precisely  the 
same  that  it  is  now,  and  some  day,  as  the  realisation  of 


ECONOMICS  AND  JOURNALISM  309 

Socialism  draws  closer,  the  value  of  the  work  we  then  did 
will  probably  be  appreciated  much  more  highly  than  it  is 
now. 

Justice  had  not  been  started  more  than  three  months 
when  the  first  of  the  great  debates  took  place  which  from 
time  to  time  have  enlivened  the  Socialist  movement.  Charles 
Bradlaugh  at  this  date  was  at  the  height  of  his  vigour  and 
fame.  He  was  undoubtedly  the  most  formidable  and  im- 
posing platform  figure  in  the  country.  Tall,  powerful,  and 
well-shaped  in  body,  his  face  was  that  of  a  huge  bull-dog 
with  the  upper  lip  drawn  down  instead  of  being  turned  up. 
And  he  had  all  the  qualities  of  the  animal  he  resembled 
when  fully  roused.  No  man  of  our  time  fought  a  harder 
uphill  fight  than  Bradlaugh.  Not  content  with  being  an 
ardent  Radical  he  was  at  the  same  time,  as  all  the  world 
knows,  a  most  pugnacious  and  persistent  Secularist.  It  is 
not  too  much  to  say  that,  though  not  possessed  of  the 
literary  capacity  of  Watts  or  Foote,  the  scientific  knowledge 
of  Aveling  or  M'Cabe  or  the  charm  of  oratory  which  dis- 
tinguished Annie  Besant,  he  was  at  that  time  the  real  in- 
spirer  and  organiser  of  the  Secularist  party  in  Great  Britain, 
which,  since  his  death,  has  had  good  reason  to  recognise  the 
extraordinary  force  of  the  man. 

That  he  was  more  than  a  little  of  a  bully  and  a  despot, 
as  well  as  a  capable  and  courageous  leader,  cannot  be  dis- 
puted. But  this  was  almost  inevitable,  not  only  from  his 
natural  character  but  from  the  circumstances  in  which  that 
character  developed.  He  was  an  individualist  of  indi- 
vidualists. Every  man  must  make  his  own  way  with  his 
own  right  arm.  That  the  weakest  should  go  to  the  wall 
was  a  beneficial  fact  for  the  race:  that  he,  Bradlaugh, 
would  survive  in  this  competition  as  one  of  the  fittest  he 
had  no  doubt  whatever.  And  he  took  good  care  to  impress 
this  view  of  himself  upon  all  with  whom  he  came  in  contact. 
Secularism  in  Bradlaugh's  day  was  the  fanaticism  of  nega- 


310  THE  RECORD   OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

tion,  and  Bradlaugh  was  at  one  and  the  same  time  the 
prophet,  high  priest  and  King  of  this  nullifying  creed. 

Of  course  he  was  deadly  opposed  to  Socialism.  Though 
accepting  the  material  basis  of  life  and  society,  on  which 
Bradlaugh  himself  took  his  stand,  Socialism  represented 
the  constructive  side  of  his  destructive  propaganda.  It  set 
itself  the  task  of  teaching  mankind  the  truth  about  the 
relentless  but  unconscious  or  unappreciated  development 
towards  Collectivism  and  Socialism,  and  the  higher  indi- 
vidualism which  would  arise  out  of  this  inevitable  progres- 
sion. The  ultimate  object  being  to  secure  for  all  that  true 
liberty  which  is  the  knowledge  of  necessity  and  which  gives 
man  in  society  ever-increasing  and  self-understanding  con- 
trol over  the  forces  of  nature,  as  well  as  over  the  growth  of 
society  itself. 

Bradlaugh  did  not  understand  all  this  a  bit.  He  laughed 
at  it  as  chimerical  utopianism,  and  never  lost  a  chance  of 
speaking  against  Socialism.  It  became  necessary,  there- 
fore, to  controvert  him  publicly  and  in  a  striking  way. 
The  best  thing  we  could  think  of  was  that  there  should  be 
a  public  debate  in  the  St.  James's  Hall.  The  discussion  was 
on  "Will  Socialism  benefit  the  English  People?"  Profes- 
sor Beesly,  admired  and  even  revered  by  advanced  men  of 
all  shades  of  opinion,  for  his  splendid  and  courageous  work 
on  behalf  of  the  people  and  of  the  oppressed  of  every  coun- 
try, was  the  Chairman,  and  I  was  chosen  to  confront  and 
debate  with  Bradlaugh.  Many  thought  I  had  undertaken 
too  heavy  a  task,  and,  of  course,  to  meet  Bradlaugh  at  his 
best,  with  so  little  experience  of  platform  work  as  I  had 
then,  was  a  serious  matter.  But  I  had  one  idea  in  my 
head  and  that  was,  whatever  might  come  of  the  debate 
thereafter,  to  get  in,  during  my  first  half-hour,  a  statement 
of  the  meaning  and  objects  of  Socialism  which  people  would 
easily  read.  It  was  worth  even  being  beaten  in  immediate 
argument,  if  I  was  to  be  beaten,  to  ensure  that.  But  I 


ECONOMICS  AND  JOURNALISM  311 

don't  deny  that  I  looked  forward  to  the  conflict  with  some'- 
trepidation,  as  the  fear  of  doing  harm  to  the  cause  itself, 
even  for  a  short  time,  weighed  upon  my  mind. 

The  weather  was  not  at  all  favourable  to  a  man  who 
suffers  from  a  sluggish  liver.  The  evening  of  the  debate 
there  was  a  dry,  cold,  biting  east  wind  which  shrivelled  me 
up.  I  don't  know  why  I  had  the  impression,  but  the  idea 
was  in  my  mind  that  Bradlaugh  thought  I  should  fail  to 
appear,  my  courage  failing  me  at  the  last  moment.  But  I 
came  in  just  at  five  minutes  to  eight  o'clock  and  we  began 
punctually  enough.  I  succeeded  to  the  full  extent  of  what 
I  had  hoped  for  in  getting  in  every  point  I  wished  to  make 
in  my  first  half-hour's  speech,  and  then  Bradlaugh  had  his 
innings,  and  a  very  good  innings  it  was  too.  Nowadays, 
when  Socialism  is  well  understood,  even  by  many  who  pre- 
tend it  is  ridiculous,  Bradlaugh's  attacks  would  sound  quite 
out  of  date  and  perhaps  not  a  little  absurd.  But  at  that 
time,  well  supported  as  he  was  by  his  own  party  in  St. 
James's  Hall,  they  were  telling  enough.  When,  therefore, 
with  a  dexterity  I  could  not  but  admire,  he  wound  up  his 
first  speech  on  the  very  tick  of  his  time,  after  having  quoted 
some  impressive  figures  of  the  Savings  Banks,  and  other 
accumulations  as  he  contended  of  working-class  thrift,  with 
the  words  " Fight  those,"  I  knew  very  well  that  my  victory, 
if  gained  at  all,  would  not  be  won  that  night,  in  the  opinion 
of  the  audience  at  any  rate.  But  I  do  not  think  I  showed 
any  depression  and  when  I  glanced  through  the  verbatim 
Report  of  the  Debate  again  the  other  day,  I  declare  there 
was  not  a  great  deal  I  should  care  even  now  to  change  in 
my  later  speeches.  It  was  for  this  Debate  William  Morris 
wrote  his  "All  For  The  Cause"  which  filled  one  full  page  of 
Justice. 

Of  course  the  Bradlaugh  folk  thought  their  champion 
had  triumphed,  and  many  of  them  were  not  behindhand  in 
saying  so  as  they  filed  out  of  the  Hall.  But  the  answer  to 


312    THE  RECORD  OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

one  of  them,  attributed  to  Bernard  Shaw,  "Our  man  has 
been  playing  at  longer  bowls  than  you  know,"  really  did 
sum  up  the  situation.  It  is  the  fact  that  within  six  months 
of  that  debate,  Annie  Besant,  Dr.  Aveling,  Heaford  and 
several  more  of  Bradlaugh's  ablest  supporters  joined  the 
Social-Democratic  Federation. 

One  thing  struck  me  very  much  after  the  debate:  the 
exaggerated  deference  paid  to  Bradlaugh  personally  by 
those  immediately  around  him.  It  gave  me  a  shock.  I 
noted  too  that  the  great  Secularist  drank  a  deep  draught 
of  cold  claret  after  his  exertions,  and  I  told  my  wife  then 
that,  heated  as  he  was,  this  was  a  deadly  indulgence.  I 
know  it  would  have  settled  me  very  quickly.  Six  years 
later,  when,  owing  to  John  Burns's  running  away  from  his 
own  challenge  to  Bradlaugh,  I  was  forced  to  oppose  my  old 
opponent  again  in  St.  James's  Hall  on  the  Eight  Hour  Law, 
I  recognised  at  once  he  was  not  at  all  the  same  man  I  had 
encountered  in  1884.  There  is  and  there  can  be  no  prin- 
ciple in  a  limitation  of  work  to  a  fixed  maximum  of  eight 
hours  per  day  and  I  told  all  my  old  comrades  and  friends 
of  the  Social-Democratic  Federation,  Quelch  and  Lee  and 
Hunter  Watts  and  others,  that  I  was  going  forward  to 
defeat,  or  at  the  very  best  a  drawn  battle. 

But  Bradlaugh  really  beat  himself.  I  had  nothing  to 
do  but  to  state  and  restate  my  case,  and  to  offer  him  the 
Bill  to  criticise  which  he  had  forced  me  to  draw  and  would 
not  discuss.  In  fact,  Bradlaugh  was  ill,  the  heat  was 
terrific,  the  tide  had  turned  against  individualism ;  so,  what 
between  downright  physical  ailment  and  mental  irritation 
arising  from  that  cause,  he  did  himself  no  sort  of  justice  in 
the  face  of  a  none  too  friendly  audience.  I  have  always 
said  that  Bradlaugh,  with  all  his  great  strength  and  wonder- 
ful constitution,  was  even  then  a  dying  man,  and  I  felt 
sorry  to  see  such  a  splendid  fighter,  deeply  as  I  differed 
from  him,  passing  away  from  the  field  of  conflict. 


ECONOMICS  AND  JOURNALISM  313 

From  this  time  onwards  my  work  in  the  Socialist  move- 
ment was  very  active,  very  exhausting,  and,  at  times,  very 
depressing.  Apart  from  editing  Justice,  contributing  articles 
and  doing  other  writing  I  was  constantly  engaged  in  speak- 
ing at  public  meetings  in  halls  and  in  the  open  air.  The 
open-air  work  was  to  me  the  most  trying  of  all.  I  began 
it  too  late  in  life  thoroughly  to  understand  how  to  take  it 
easy.  At  first  I  had  also  a  strong  prejudice  against  ad- 
dressing the  hopeless  sort  of  audiences  we  had  to  deal  with 
at  the  beginning  of  our  propaganda.  I  always  consider  I 
first  stripped  myself  of  my  class  prejudices  when  I  addressed 
a  gathering  largely  made  up  of  rather  debauched-looking 
persons  round  the  old  pump  at  Clerkenwell  Green.  I 
laughed  a  little  at  myself  standing  there  in  the  full  rig-out 
of  the  well-to-do  fashionable,  holding  forth  to  these  mani- 
fest degenerates  on  the  curse  of  capitalism  and  the  glories 
of  the  coming  time. 

Our  old  friend  Jonathan  Taylor  of  Sheffield,  who  was 
then  working  with  us  in  London,  walked  back  with  me  one 
day  from  this  meeting  place  and  took  me  to  task  all  the 
way  home  on  my  optimism.  I  heard  him  for  once  patiently 
and  without  interruption,  as  he  descanted  upon  the  draw- 
backs to  my  exaggerated  enthusiasm.  When  we  neared  our 
door,  however,  I  turned  on  him  and  asked,  "How  do  you 
know  I  am  optimist  in  this  business?"  "By  the  way  you 
talk,"  he  answered;  "you  speak  as  if  the  revolution  would 
be  here  in  a  few  years."  "And  would  you  tell  them  it 
won't?"  said  I;  "if  you  did  you  would  throw  back  the 
movement  at  once,"  which  was  quite  true.  No  leader  of  a 
popular  movement,  in  however  small  a  way,  must  ever  look 
or  speak  as  if  he  were  in  the  least  discouraged.  Should  he 
do  so,  and  there  is  no  one  at  hand  to  correct  the  effect  of 
this,  there  is  a  marked  set  back  observable  immediately. 
Of  such  is  the  making  of  democracy. 

I  said  above  that  open-air  speaking  to  those  not  trained 


314          THE  RECORD  OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

to  it  is  an  arduous  job  physically:  it  also  calls  for  a  good 
deal  of  alacrity  mentally,  especially  if  the  speaker  is  advo- 
cating an  unpopular  cause.  I  know  no  better  training, 
indeed,  for  dealing  with  interruptions  and  attacks  and 
questions  than  a  course  of  street-corner  oratory.  It  is  often 
only  the  unexpected  that  happens  in  such  circumstances, 
and  a  speaker  must  have  his  wits  about  him,  in  London 
particularly,  where,  as  in  most  capital  cities,  the  fringe  of  a 
crowd  is  abnormally  sharp.  It  is  absolutely  necessary  at 
times  to  turn  the  laugh  against  the  witster  who  challenges 
you,  no  matter  at  what  loss  of  dignity,  and  questions  must 
be  answered  right  off,  clearly  and  without  hesitation. 
You  can  afford  to  be  wrong  but  you  cannot  possibly  afford 
to  seem  doubtful. 

I  could  fill  a  good  many  pages  with  more  or  less  amusing 
stories  of  platform  readiness  or  the  reverse,  but  the  two 
following  anecdotes  have  their  own  moral.  Our  veteran 
speaker  and  writer  Quelch,  who,  with  few  advantages,  has 
become  the  best  informed  and  most  capable  of  the  able 
men  who  are  carefully  kept  out  of  the  Labour  ranks  in  the 
House  of  Commons,  was  speaking  at  a  street  corner  in  Wai- 
worth  when  he  was  a  candidate  for  the  School  Board.  It 
was  a  raw,  cold  night,  the  air  foggy  and  choking,  but  Quelch 
had  a  fair  audience  of  the  very  poor  gathered  around  him 
in  one  of  the  most  poverty-stricken  districts  of  this  most 
poverty-stricken  locality.  The  houses  around  showing  up 
the  gloomy  and  dirty  depression  without  spoke  eloquently 
of  the  misery  and  too  often  filth  within.  "See,"  said  Quelch, 
"the  sort  of  dog-hutches  that  are  good  enough  for  toilers 
of  your  class  and  mine.  Look  at  these  wretched  kennels 
into  which  you  slink  after  having  spent  weeks  and  months 
and  years  of  your  lives  ill-taught,  ill-fed,  ill-clothed,  piling 
up  riches  for  the  classes  who  rob  you  of  your  labour  and 
ever  keep  you  down.  Such  slums  as  these  are  a  disgrace 
to  this  city  and  this  nation.  That  slum  over  there  is  an 


ECONOMICS  AND  JOURNALISM  315 

outrage  on  humanity."  Scarcely  were  the  words  out  of  his 
mouth  when  a  tall,  uncouth-looking  man  standing  in  the 
little  crowd  next  to  me,  clad  in  ragged  clothes  with  a  rough 
scarf  round  his  neck  and  an  ill-shaped  cap  on  his  head  and 
his  boots  broken  out  at  the  toes  called  out,  "'Ere  I  say 
mister  you  be  a  bit  careful  in  what  you're  talking  about 
calling  this  a  slum.  I  lives  'ere!"  Born,  brought  up  and 
living  all  their  lives  in  grime  and  squalor  the  men  and 
women  of  the  slums  won't  have  it  they  exist  in  —  slums. 

The  following  incident  occurred  to  myself.  I  had  been 
taunting  a  working-class  audience  with  their  apathy,  in- 
difference and  ignorance,  and  holding  forth  at  length  upon 
their  contemptible  lack  of  capacity  to  understand  their  own 
power,  if  only  they  would  rouse  themselves  to  action  against 
the  class  which  oppressed  and  robbed  them.  I  said  that 
people  who  put  up  with  such  conditions  of  life  were  destitute 
of  any  sense.  At  the  end  of  my  address  one  of  those  present, 
who,  quite  properly,  objected  to  this  attack  upon  himself 
and  his  fellows  by  a  well-to-do  man  like  myself,  got  up  to 
ask  a  question,  which  we  have  always  allowed  at  our  meet- 
ings. "I  should  like  to  ask  the  lecturer"  —  we  were  all 
"lecturers"  at  the  start  —  "Mr.  Chairman,  through  you, 
whether  he  seriously  meant  to  tell  us  that  the  workers  of 
this  country  are  lunatics,  whether  he  did  not  really  say 
that  they  are  lunatics."  I  rose  most  gravely.  "No,  sir," 
I  replied,  "I  did  not  say  or  suggest  that  the  workers  of 
Great  Britain  are  lunatics."  (Oh  !  Oh  !)  "Well,  Mr.  Chair- 
man, it  is,  of  course,  within  the  memory  of  the  meeting, 
but  I  again  ask  Mr.  Hyndman  plainly  whether  he  did  not 
tell  this  audience  that  the  working  classes  are  lunatics." 
"No,  sir,  I  positively  declare  that  I  did  not  say  the  work- 
ing classes  are  lunatics."  (Oh!  oh!  shame!)  "I  ask  Mr. 
Hyndman  once  more  did  not  he  say  the  English  workers 
were  lunatics?"  By  this  time  things  had  got  a  little  hot, 
so  I  gave  my  explanation  at  once :  —  "No,  sir,  I  never  said 


316          THE  RECORD   OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

the  working  people  of  this  island  are  lunatics"  —  (uproar) 
—  "because"  (very  loud,  so  as  to  be  heard  over  the  din) 
"in  order  that  people  may  become  lunatics  they  must  have 
minds  to  go  out  of  to  start  with."  (A  burst  of  laughter.) 
"What  I  did  say  was  that  the  working  classes  of  London 
and  of  England  are  idiots,  and  I  say  it  again."  I  sat  down 
amid  a  round  of  cheering. 

That  is  their  way:  the  people  will  stand  any  amount  of 
denunciation  of  their  own  shortcomings  if  only  you  stick 
to  your  guns  and  have  a  little  sense  of  humour.  Unfor- 
tunately, it  goes  no  farther:  act  in  their  own  class  interest, 
as  an  organised  political  force,  they  will  not.  The  addresses 
we  were  then  giving  in  the  Radical  Clubs  were  almost  as 
depressing  for  the  speaker  as  the  street  corner  orations  at 
Clerkenwell  Green,  Mile  End  Waste,  or  Bermondsey.  Morris 
was  a  stop-gap,  Bernard  Shaw  a  "turn"  at  these  beer- 
swilling,  gin-absorbing  "political  centres."  Eloquence, 
satire,  adjuration  were  all  merely  accompaniments  to  end- 
less potations,  and  potmen  strolled  around  taking  orders  in 
the  middle  of  the  most  moving  passages  of  the  speaker's 
address.  But  we  did,  nevertheless,  get  able  recruits  out  of 
these  unpromising  surroundings,  and  by  degrees  we  weakened 
the  influence  of  these  subsidised  Radical  Clubs,  though  not 
so  completely  as  we  thought  and  hoped  at  the  time. 

When  I  remember,  however,  that  in  1881  there  was  to 
all  intents  and  purposes  no  Socialism  at  all  in  Great  Britain, 
and  then  look  round  to-day  I  cannot  consider  our  efforts, 
in  spite  of  all  treachery  and  loss  of  enthusiasm,  have  been 
in  vain.  But  what  a  lot  of  work  has  been  done.  I  look 
back  myself  with  some  satisfaction  to  the  open-air  meetings 
in  the  Parks.  Some  of  the  speaking,  apart  from  the  work- 
ing-class agitators  themselves,  was  really  excellent.  Cham- 
pion was  very  good,  and  Frank  Harris,  when  a  member  of 
our  body,  was  one  of  the  most  effective  of  our  out-door 
orators,  and  he  did  good  service  in  helping  on  the  intel- 


ECONOMICS  AND  JOURNALISM  317 

lectual  and  oratorical  development  of  James  M'Donald  and 
others.  I  myself  used  to  have  at  one  time  quite  a  regular 
audience  in  Hyde  Park,  of  which  W.  E.  H.  Lecky,  Fitz- 
james  Stephen,  and  Randolph  Churchill,  all  of  whom  lived 
close  by,  were  frequent  members.  It  is  all  very  well  to 
laugh  at  the  tub-thumper  and  stump-orator,  but  I  should 
very  much  like  to  try  some  of  our  self-satisfied  members 
of  Parliament  and  "tone-of-the-House"  men  against  such 
gatherings  as  we  used  to  have  round  the  Hyde  Park  Reser- 
voir; when  at  any  moment  an  expert  in  history  or  eco- 
nomics or  sociology  might  throw  in  an  interjection  or  put  a 
serious  question  at  the  end.  On  one  occasion  Lecky  entered 
the  field  against  one  of  our  open-air  speakers,  and  after- 
wards handsomely  admitted  that  though  he  did  not  agree 
with  what  had  been  said,  there  was  ground  for  argument 
on  our  side.  Thousands  of  such  meetings  of  various  degrees 
of  size  and  merit  were  held  throughout  the  country,  and 
even  yet  we  do  not  feel  the  full  effect  of  all  that  was  then 
done. 

Everything  in  fact  at  this  time  prognosticated  for  us  a 
long  period  of  useful,  however  difficult  and  uphill,  agita- 
tion. The  withdrawal  of  the  Fabians  had  been  more  than 
made  up  for  by  the  accession  of  strength  from  other  quarters 
and  never  at  any  period,  having  regard  to  the  comparatively 
recent  establishment  of  a  Socialist  organisation  in  England, 
did  things  look  so  bright  for  our  propaganda  as  they  did  in 
the  summer  and  early  autumn  of  1884.  A  list  of  our  speakers 
and  writers  alone  is  even  now  sufficient  to  show  where  we 
were  in  those  days.  Morris,  Bax,  Champion,  Quelch, 
Thorne,  Burns,  Williams,  Herbert  Burrows,  Joynes,  Salt, 
Frost,  Eleanor  Marx,  Keddell,  Andreas  Scheu,  Annie  Besant, 
Edward  Aveling,  Hobart,  Hunter  Watts,  Helen  Taylor,  the 
Murrays  —  this  made  up,  with  others  not  named,  a  very 
strong  combination  indeed.  Lee,  our  Secretary,  also  joined 
us  at  this  time.  It  was  reasonable,  with  such  a  group  of 


318  THE  RECORD  OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

men  and  women  gathered  round,  an  effective  weekly  journal, 
and  with  a  well-organised  centre  as  a  rallying  point,  to 
believe  that  in  a  few  years  we  might  rival  the  strength  and 
discipline  of  the  German  party,  while  possessing  some  of  the 
life  and  unexpectedness  of  the  French.  In  the  brief  sketch 
of  William  Morris  and  his  connection  with  the  movement  I 
tell  of  the  deplorable  split,  which,  arising  chiefly  out  of  a 
personal  misunderstanding  with  myself,  did  the  greatest 
possible  harm  to  the  entire  Socialist  movement,  and  led  on 
to  those  unfortunate  sectional  combinations  which  have 
been  and  still  are  so  prejudicial  to  the  whole  Socialist  de- 
velopment in  Great  Britain. 

It  was  a  great  shock  that  separation;  but  those  of  us 
who  remained  when  Morris  and  his  companions  left  were 
quite  resolved  we  would  not  be  beaten,  and  we  weren't. 
But  what  a  waste  of  energy  it  was  to  have  the  Social-Demo- 
cratic Federation  and  the  Socialist  League  struggling 
against  one  another,  instead  of  striving  together  for  one 
another,  all  those  years.  Now  and  then  we  combined,  as 
at  the  Commemoration  of  the  Commune  of  Paris,  when 
Eleanor  Marx  made  one  of  the  finest  speeches  I  ever  heard. 
The  woman  seemed  inspired  with  some  of  the  eloquence 
of  the  old  prophets  of  her  race,  as  she  spoke  of  the  eternal 
life  gained  by  those  who  fought  and  fell  in  the  great  cause 
of  the  uplifting  of  humanity :  an  eternal  life  in  the  material 
and  intellectual  improvement  of  countless  generations  of 
mankind.  It  was  a  bitter  cold,  snow-swept  night  in  the 
street  outside,  but  in  the  Hall  the  warmth  of  comradeship 
exceeded  that  of  any  Commune  celebration  I  have  ever 
attended.  We  were  one  that  night.  The  day  after,  the 
antagonism  recommenced. 


CHAPTER  XXI 

WILLIAM  MORRIS 

r  shows  how  little  was  known  of  William  Morris  by  the 
ordinary  man  who  was  deeply  interested  in  literature, 
that  it  was  not  before  1865  that  I  became  acquainted  with  his 
writings,  though  Swinburne,  with  his  "Atalanta  in  Caly- 
don"  and  other  poems,  had  swept  me  away  years  before. 
I  have  never  been  able  to  understand  this;  for  Morris  was 
easily  intelligible,  the  charm  of  his  verse  is  attractive  to  all, 
and  the  fact  that  he  was  so  closely  associated  with  and  so 
much  admired  by  the  men  who  were  then  greatly  influenc- 
ing the  world  of  art  and  letters  ought  to  have  secured  for 
him  a  wide  public.  Yet  it  was  not  until  Swinburne  spoke 
of  him  as  a  great  poet  that  the  majority  even  of  reading 
men  were  aware  that  so  fine  a  genius  was  living  unappre- 
ciated among  us. 

He  was  much  better  known  for  his  persistent  revolu- 
tionary assaults  upon  the  commonplace  domestic  decora- 
tion and  furniture  of  the  mid- Victorian  period  than  for  his 
delightful  verse;  and  few,  indeed,  were  aware  that  in 
politics  he  was,  so  far  as  he  cared  about  or  understood 
them,  far  ahead  of  the  Radicals  with  whom  he  ordinarily 
associated  himself.  In  fact,  it  was  always  a  marvel  to  me 
after  I  got  to  know  Morris  well,  how  he  contrived  to  get 
on  with  those  Radicals  as  well  as  he  did,  and  how  he  came 
to  back  Russia  against  Turkey.  But  one  thing  is  quite 
certain,  he  was  always  against  autocracy,  class  authority 
and  domination  of  any  kind,  long  before  he  became  a  Socialist. 

I  first  met  Morris  at  the  offices  of  the  Trade  Union  Par- 

319 


320  THE  RECORD   OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

liamentary  Committee,  then  under  the  control  of  our  old 
enemies  and  friends,  Henry  Broadhurst,  Burt  and  Co.  I 
went  at  their  request  in  1879  to  deliver  an  address  upon 
India,  and  Morris  was  present.  We  had  a  friendly  chat  after 
the  meeting,  but  I  was  supposed  at  that  time  to  be  friendly 
to  the  Tory  Party,  in  spite  of  my  strong  opinions  about  the 
misgovernment  of  India,  and  I  think  Morris  himself  regarded 
me  as  rather  "suspect."  However  that  may  be,  he  cordially 
agreed  with  me  about  India  and,  as  he  frequently  told  me 
years  afterwards,  was  greatly  disappointed  when  all  the 
promising  agitation  of  1877  to  1880  failed  to  produce  a 
permanent  effect,  or  to  relieve  India  in  any  way  from  the 
pressure  of  our  ruinous  foreign  control.  I  did  not  meet 
Morris  again  until  I  opened  the  discussions  on  "  Practical 
Remedies  for  Pressing  Needs"  at  Westminster  Palace 
Chambers  in  January  1882,  referred  to  elsewhere.  The 
Democratic  Federation  had  then  been  in  existence  nearly  a 
year. 

After  listening  to  the  discussions  and  taking  part  in 
them,  Morris  decided,  having  put  a  few  questions,  to  throw 
in  his  lot  with  the  Federation.  This  was  really  a  very 
plucky  act  on  his  part ;  for  it  was  one  thing  to  be  suspected 
of  heterodox  opinions,  as  a  genial  eccentricity  allowable  to 
a  man  of  his  note,  and  quite  another  thing  to  be  mixed  up 
actively  with  an  extreme  organisation  which  made  no 
attempt  to  hide  its  revolutionary  tendencies.  There  is  no 
doubt,  however,  that  Morris's  adherence  to  the  cause  at 
this  time  added  greatly  to  our  strength  as  well  as  to  our 
confidence  in  the  possibility  of  bringing  over  the  more  en- 
lightened and  capable  of  the  educated  class  to  our  side. 

For  in  1882  Morris  was  at  the  height  of  his  great  reputa- 
tion. He  had  already  succeeded  in  everything  he  had 
attempted.  Not  only  was  he  a  distinguished  man  of  letters, 
an  artist,  a  craftsman,  a  designer,  a  decorator,  with  a 
thorough  knowledge  of  architecture  and  all  connected  there- 


WILLIAM  MORRIS  321 

with;  but  in  addition  to,  and  in  spite  of,  all  these  remark- 
able capacities  embodied  in  one  person  he  had  actually 
built  up  a  successful  business  when  his  own  considerable 
fortune  ran  short.  Here,  obviously,  was  no  needy  and 
greedy  proletarian,  no  embittered  revolutionist,  no  disap- 
pointed politician  or  cynical  publicist.  Morris  was  a  Uni- 
versity man  who  had  achieved  for  himself  a  European 
fame,  and  was  universally  regarded  as  one  of  the  few  living 
Englishmen  who  would  be  accorded  willingly  a  leading 
position  among  the  most  celebrated  men  of  his  time. 

The  world  at  large  did  not  quite  know  what  to  make  of 
it;  for  we  had  attracted  to  us  at  the  same  time  others, 
men  and  women,  who  were  entitled  to  be  regarded  with 
respect.  Socialism  was  no  longer  the  creed  only  of  the  scum 
of  the  earth :  there  must  be  something  in  this  subversionist 
movement  for  it  to  call  down  a  personality  of  so  much 
knowledge  and  refinement  from  his  library  and  studio  and 
workshop  to  the  crowded  meeting  and  the  rough-and- 
tumble  gathering  at  the  street  corner.  For  Morris  was 
even  too  eager  to  take  his  full  share  in  the  unpleasant  part 
of  our  public  work,  and  speedily  showed  that  he  meant  to 
work  in  grim  earnest  on  the  same  level  as  the  rank  and 
file  of  our  party.  That  was  Morris's  way  from  the  first. 
He  was  never  satisfied  unless  he  was  doing  things  which, 
to  say  the  truth,  he  was  little  fitted  for,  and  others  of  coarser 
fibre  could  do  much  better  than  he.  But  then  in  those 
days  we  were  all  full  of  zeal,  enthusiasm  and  revolutionary 
confidence.  We  may  have  known  in  our  hearts  that  we 
had  taken  up  with  a  long  and  trying  and  difficult  job,  but 
we  certainly  felt  that  we  were  the  champions  of  a  great 
and  glorious  cause  that  could  not  but  be  victorious  in  the 
long  run. 

I  got  to  know  William  Morris  very  well  indeed  during 
those  first  months  and  years  of  his  close  connection  with 
our  movement.  And  I  never  think  of  our  friendship  in 

Y 


322  THE  RECORD  OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

those  early  days  without  the  deepest  regret  at  its  breaking 
off  for  a  time,  and  the  manner  in  which  the  rupture  was 
brought  about.  Morris's  was  a  remarkable  face  and  figure. 
I  always  recall  him  in  that  blue  tweed  sailor-cut  suit  which 
someone  unkindly  said  made  him  look  like  the  purser  of  a 
Dutch  brig.  But  you  very  soon  forgot  all  about  his  rough 
clothes  or  his  soft  hat,  when  he  began  to  talk  upon  any 
subject  which  interested  him.  His  imposing  forehead  and 
clear  grey  eyes,  with  the  powerful  nose  and  slightly  florid 
cheeks,  impressed  upon  you  the  truth  and  importance  of 
what  he  was  saying,  every  hair  of  his  head  and  in  his  rough 
shaggy  beard  appearing  to  enter  into  the  subject  as  a  living 
part  of  himself.  His  impulsive,  forcible  action,  allied  to  an 
admirable  choice  of  words,  gave  almost  a  physical  force  to 
his  arguments,  which  was  not  lessened  by  the  sturdy  vigor- 
ous frame  from  which  they  proceeded. 

Morris  was  always  active,  always  at  work,  always  filled 
with  ideas  of  what  he  should  do  next.  I  have  never  met 
any  man  whose  life  was  one  of  such  persistent,  never- 
ceasing  exertion  of  faculty.  Even  when  in  what  ought  to 
have  been  repose,  the  same  unfailing  activity  of  mind  was 
at  its  height  as  some  sudden  remark  showed.  It  seemed 
quite  impossible,  even  when  he  was  seated  quietly  in  his 
own  home,  dealing  with  his  own  favourite  subjects,  or  run- 
ning over  the  designs  at  his  factory  at  Merton  Abbey,  or 
considering  new  projects  for  the  splendid  printing  at  his 
Kelmscott  Press  to  think  of  him  as  the  "idle  singer  of  an 
empty  day"  he  calls  himself  in  his  Earthly  Paradise. 

In  fact,  though  at  the  back  of  Morris's  mind,  quite  re- 
mote from  the  busy  haunts  of  men,  there  lay  a  great  lake 
of  receptivity  and  imagination,  ready  to  reflect  on  its  repose- 
ful surface  all  of  beauty  and  charm  that  lay  around  its 
margin  or  floated  above  its  waters,  so  that  in  its  peaceful 
mirror  successive  scenes  of  the  past  were  depictured  with 
all  the  vivid  colouring  of  the  present,  and  the  life  of  the 


WILLIAM  MORRIS  323 

present  with  all  the  glory  of  the  past;  yet  the  outward 
expression  of  Morris's  intellect  was  anything  rather  than 
the  sweet  and  almost  dreamy  cadence  of  his  delightful  verse. 
His  quick,  sharp  manner,  his  impulsive  gestures,  his  eager 
agreement  or  disagreement  with  what  was  said  or  done,  his 
hearty  laughter  and  vehement  anger,  his  active  hatred  of 
the  mean  and  delight  in  the  noble,  were  all  personal  char- 
acteristics of  a  man  of  action,  rather  than  of  a  sensitive 
poet,  or  of  a  thoughtful  creator  and  inspirer  of  artistic 
conceptions. 

Only  when  smoking  his  pipe  at  his  own  fireside,  and  in 
his  garden,  or  at  some  gathering  of  familiar  friends,  did  the 
Morris  of  reflection  and  profound  knowledge  make  his  ap- 
pearance quite  unwittingly,  without  the  slightest  air  of 
superiority.  The  extent  and  depth  of  his  acquirements 
were  a  matter  of  constant  wonder  to  me.  He  not  only 
knew  many  things,  and  knew  them  well,  but  his  accuracy 
in  detail  was  as  astonishing  as  his  imaginative  presentation 
and  realisation  of  the  whole  were  entrancing. 

How  easily  I  recall  those  evenings  spent  with  him  in  that 
fine  room  at  Kelmscott  House  on  the  Mall  Hammersmith. 
Morris  had  had  the  ceiling  removed  which  separated  the  large 
room  where  we  were  to  have  supper  or  dinner  from  the  two 
rooms  above,  giving  the  apartment  quite  an  unusual  height. 
This  height  was  taken  advantage  of  to  display  on  one 
side,  hanging  down  from  a  curtain-pole,  as  if  it  were  a 
great  picture,  a  magnificent  Oriental  carpet,  whose  gor- 
geous, yet  harmoniously  combined  and  contrasted  colours, 
made  it  a  picture  indeed.  On  the  other  side  of  the  room 
were  a  number  of  paintings  by  Rossetti.  Here,  after  a  lecture 
in  the  stable  which  he  had  turned  into  a  hall,  or  an  address 
in  the  open-air  outside  by  the  river,  some  of  us  used  to 
gather,  and  a  delightful  time  we  had. 

It  was  on  such  occasions  that  Morris's  remarkable  knowl- 
edge of  this  country  and  its  history  made  itself  felt.  He 


324  THE  RECORD  OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

was  talking,  for  example,  of  Sussex,  a  county  with  which 
both  my  wife  and  myself  were  well  acquainted  from  child- 
hood. We  saw  it  as  we  had  never  seen  it  before.  In  a  few 
minutes  Morris  gave  us  a  masterly  sketch  of  the  county 
when  its  seaports  and  monasteries,  castles  and  ironworks 
were  in  their  prime,  and  Sussex  itself  was  to  a  great  extent 
cut  off  from  the  rest  of  England  by  Ashdown  Forest.  The 
whole  life  of  the  period  passed  before  our  eyes :  the  arrivals 
at  Rye,  or  Winchelsea,  or  Hastings,  the  journeyings  to 
Bodiam,  Pevensey,  or  Hurstmonceaux,  the  receptions  at 
Lewes  Monastery  and  Castle,  or  at  Battle  Abbey  and  For- 
tress, the  cavalcade  making  its  way  along  the  roads,  or 
threading  its  path  through  the  dangerous  forest  tracks 
northwards.  All  the  bravery  and  majesty  of  the  old  times 
came  out,  as  Morris  talked  to  us :  much  as  though  Chaucer 
himself  had  returned  to  earth  and  was  holding  forth  again 
beneath  the  glimpses  of  the  moon. 

I  never  thoroughly  understood  Agincourt  until  Morris 
described  it  to  us  one  night  at  our  little  Supper-Club.  The 
great  mass  of  French  cavalry  with  their  bowmen  in  the 
near  distance,  the  marsh  below  the  hill,  the  small,  worn, 
half-fed  band  of  the  English  King's  followers  gathered  on 
the  rising  ground,  the  English  Archers  pulling  their  arrows 
out  of  their  quivers  and  sticking  them  in  the  soft  earth  like 
little  palisades  around  them.  Then  the  charge  of  the 
French  Knights  in  all  their  blaze  of  glory,  the  volleys  of 
arrows,  the  floundering  of  the  horses  and  their  riders  in  the 
morass,  crushed  down  and  suffocated  by  the  pressure  of 
the  other  lines  of  knights  who  were  rushing  on  behind  them. 
It  was  all  most  vivid,  and  I  saw  the  battle  as  it  was  fought, 
and  the  victory  as  it  was  won. 

Again,  I  had  gone  down  with  Morris  to  Oxford,  where  he 
was  to  take  the  Chair  for  me  in  an  Address  on  Socialism  I 
had  agreed  to  give  at  the  Russell  Club.  Those,  by  the  way, 
were  the  days  of  small  things  for  us  all,  and,  confident  as  I 


WILLIAM  MORRIS  325 

felt  in  my  knowledge  of  my  subject,  I  knew  that  Henry 
George  had  made  a  failure  of  his  visit  and  speech  the  week 
before,  and  I  felt  just  a  little  apprehensive  of  what  might 
befall  me;  though  Morris  and  his  old  friend,  Faulkner  of 
University,  with  whom  we  dined,  were  kind  enough  to  say 
I  had  not  the  least  reason  to  be  afraid.  Nervous  I  was  none 
the  less,  when  I  rose  to  speak  after  Morris's  opening  words, 
as  several  of  the  University  Professors  were  present,  and 
my  reception,  though  not  precisely  cold,  was  scarcely  en- 
couraging. But,  although  there  was  no  applause,  I  had 
not  spoken  for  ten  minutes  before  I  had  the  assurance  to 
bend  down  and  whisper  to  Morris,  "I  shall  capture  this 
lot."  And  so  it  came  about,  for  I  sat  down  to  very  warm 
cheering,  and  only  a  few  quite  clear  and  fair  questions  were 
asked,  which  I  did  my  best  to  answer. 

The  following  morning  we  went  together  to  the  Bodleian 
or  Radcliffe  Library,  I  really  forget  which,  to  look  up  some 
interesting  point,  and  we  had  hardly  got  the  book  we  asked 
for,  when  the  head  librarian,  passing  along,  espied  Morris, 
and  at  once  came  up  to  him.  "Oh,  Mr.  Morris,  I  am  so 
delighted  to  find  you  here.  We  have  just  bought  a  large 
parcel  of  illuminated  missals.  You  must  come  and  identify 
and  catalogue  them  for  us."  "That  is  quite  impossible," 
said  Morris  in  his  quick  way.  "I  have  not  come  here  to 
pore  over  missals.  Besides  I  am  with  my  friend,  and  we 
have  something  else  to  do.  I  positively  can't  come." 
"Really,  Mr.  Morris,  I  am  quite  sure  your  friend  won't 
mind  a  little  delay.  You  will  be  doing  a  public  service, 
and  we  may  not  be  able  to  get  you  again."  "Well,"  replied 
Morris,  "if  my  friend  Mr.  Hyndman  here  does  not  mind,  and 
you  are  so  anxious  about  it,  I  will  see  what  I  can  do." 

So  we  went  into  an  inner  room,  where  a  great  pile  of  old 
illuminated  missals  lay  upon  the  table.  Morris  seated  him- 
self by  them,  and,  taking  them  up  one  by  one,  looked  very 
quickly  but  very  closely  and  carefully  at  each  in  turn, 


326  THE  RECORD   OP  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

pushing  it  aside  after  inspection  with  "  Monastery  So  and 
So,  date  Such  and  Such,"  "Abbey  this  in  such  a  year," 
until  he  had  finished  the  whole  number;  his  decision  being 
written  down  as  he  gave  it.  There  seemed  not  to  be  the 
slightest  doubt  in  the  librarian's  mind  that  Morris's  judg- 
ment was  correct  and  final,  and  though  Morris  hesitated 
here  and  there,  and  devoted  more  time  to  some  of  the 
missals  than  to  others,  eventually  his  verdict  was  given 
with  the  utmost  certainty.  These  missals,  I  believe,  stand 
in  the  catalogue  to-day  with  the  verifications  of  place  and 
time  that  Morris  then  gave  them,  and  I  have  no  doubt  he 
was  right  in  every  case. 

I  sat  by  and  watched  him  with  amazement,  and  I  think 
anyone  who  reflects  upon  the  extent  and  accuracy  of  the 
knowledge  which  was  needed  thus  to  identify  elaborate 
artistic  work  emanating  from  many  centres  in  many  coun- 
tries will  feel  as  much  surprised  as  I  did.  And  this,  of 
course,  was  only  one  department  of  which  he  was  a  master. 
Going  through  Norwich  Cathedral  he  insisted  upon  dis- 
closing to  the  unbelieving  sexton,  who  was  showing  us 
round,  some  fine  hidden  carvings,  all  record  of  which  had 
apparently  been  lost.  And  yet  in  reference  to  his  own  art 
there  was,  perhaps,  some  truth  in  the  remark  of  Craib 
Angus,  the  old  picture-dealer  of  Glasgow,  who  once  said 
to  me,  "Morris  in  everything  is  a  high  table-land,  but  there 
are  no  peaks  in  him." 

It  is  a  little  strange  to  recall  now  that  in  1883  or  1884, 
I  forget  which  year  at  the  moment,  I  proposed  an  out-and- 
out  Socialist  Resolution  at  the  Cambridge  Union,  of  which 
I  am  a  member,  and  Morris  and  J.  L.  Joynes  came  down 
to  support  me.  It  was  not  a  bad  debate,  and  we  actually 
took  thirty-seven  men  into  our  Lobby.  What  has  become 
of  those  revolutionary  undergraduates  of  more  than  a 
quarter  of  a  century  ago?  And  how  is  it  that,  whereas  on 
the  Continent  of  Europe  the  students  at  the  Universities 


WILLIAM  MORRIS  327 

are  the  most  progressive  and  daring  of  the  whole  com- 
munity, or  at  any  rate  a  very  large  minority  of  them  are, 
the  undergraduates  of  Oxford  and  Cambridge,  to  say  noth- 
ing of  the  Professors,  seem  to  revel  in  reaction.  What 
chance  would  an  Erasmus  or  a  Giordano  Bruno  of  to-day 
have  at  our  " Seats  of  Learning"?  Very  little,  I  fear.  At 
Cambridge  it  was,  by  the  way,  that  Morris  pointed  out  to 
me  how  the  decorations  of  King's  College  Chapel  got  poorer 
and  poorer  as  money  ran  short. 

So  it  will  be  seen  my  personal  relations  with  William 
Morris,  at  this  time,  were  very  close  and  it  might  even  be 
said  intimate.  In  fact  our  friendship  was  so  cordial  that  I 
thought  it  would  be  permanent;  the  rather  that  I  could  in 
no  way  interfere  or  compete  with  him  in  anything  he  wished 
to  do,  even  if  such  had  been  my  wish.  Our  co-operation 
in  The  Summary  of  the  Principles  of  Socialism,  the  draft  of 
which  I  wrote  and  we  revised  together,  brought  us  into  even 
closer  contact  and  it  has  been  an  amusement  to  me  some- 
times to  challenge  a  reader  of  it  to  pick  out  a  passage  for 
which  Morris  was  specially  responsible.  Almost  invariably 
the  two  pages  are  chosen  which  I  wrote  in  imitation  of 
Morris  and  which  he  laughingly  refused  to  touch,  though  a 
few  other  paragraphs  he  wrote  himself.  When  Justice 
was  started  also,  myself  being  the  editor,  Morris  wrote  for 
it  regularly,  and  some  of  his  finest  Socialist  poetry  and 
prose  appeared  in  its  columns  during  the  few  months  that 
we  worked  together  in  that  little  sheet.  I  was  justified, 
therefore,  in  believing  that  our  co-operation  would  be  last- 
ing, and  that  the  growing  Social-Democratic  group  in  this 
country  would  for  many  years  enjoy  the  advantage  of  his 
invaluable  assistance. 

None,  also,  could  fail  to  see  how  useful  such  co-operation 
was,  as  I  think  I  may  now  say,  to  both  sides.  Some  of  us 
were  able  to  supply  the  economic  and  political  knowledge, 
which  Morris  had  no  great  turn  for,  as  well  as  to  provide 


328  THE  RECORD  OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

the  speaking  faculties,  which  also  did  not  lie  in  Morris's 
line.  Nobody  could  have  taken  keener  interest  in  the 
success  not  only  of  the  cause  but  of  the  individuals  who 
were  working  for  it.  He  seemed  to  take  a  new  pleasure  in 
life  now  that  he  had  found  a  revolutionary  party  with 
which  he  could  steadily  work.  When  I  had  my  first  debate 
with  Bradlaugh,  Morris  wrote  for  Justice  that  week  for  the 
copy  which  we  distributed  at  the  meeting,  the  fine  poem 
"All  For  the  Cause"  which  moved  us  all  deeply  then,  and 
has  been  a  joy  to  the  whole  English-speaking  Socialist  move- 
ment ever  since.  Yes,  it  did  indeed  seem  that  Morris  would 
work  on  with  us  to  the  end  and  that  the  Fabians  having 
left  us  to  pursue  their  policy  of  permeation  unhampered  by 
any  truth  of  economic  doctrine,  we  should  be  spared  the 
harassing  differences  in  our  own  ranks  which  had  so  much 
hindered  the  progress  of  Socialism  in  France. 

But  this  was  not  to  be.  I  now  know  all  the  causes  which 
led  to  the  most  deplorable  quarrel  between  Morris  and 
myself;  that  the  influence  which  brought  about  the  split  at 
the  end  of  1884  was  the  malignant  lying  of  a  despicable 
married  woman,  whom  none  of  us  knew  well,  on  a  purely 
domestic  question.  This  was  the  real  reason  of  Morris's 
extreme  bitterness  at  the  time,  though,  strangely  enough, 
considering  that  Bax,  Scheu  and  the  Avelings  were  among 
those  who  withdrew  with  him  from  the  Social-Democratic 
Federation  the  grounds  for  the  secession  were  stated  to  be 
the  objection  Morris  had  to  political  action !  Those  who 
were  present  at  the  last  bitter  discussion,  when  Morris  and 
his  supporters  took  themselves  off,  though  they  were  actually 
the  majority,  will  never  forget  the  scene.  The  remarkable 
part  of  it  to  me  was  that  I  had  in  my  pocket  letters  from 
Morris  marked  " private"  which  would  have  entirely  de- 
stroyed his  contentions  both  personal  and  political.  After 
listening  for  three  solid  hours  to  the  most  virulent  abuse  of 
myself  without  speaking  a  word,  I  confess  I  was  strongly 


WILLIAM  MORRIS  329 

tempted  to  bring  those  letters  out  and  read  them.  How- 
ever, I  thought  the  whole  matter  over  as  I  sat  there,  and 
although  I  felt  quite  convinced  that  under  the  circumstances 
—  private  letters  of  my  own  having  been  read  and  private 
conversations  repeated  and  garbled,  I  was  quite  justified  in 
disclosing  what  had  been  written  to  me  in  confidence  —  I 
nevertheless  decided  that  I  would  not  allow  myself  to  be 
provoked  into  such  action.  If  I  did,  those  who  might  be 
disposed  to  rely  upon  me  in  future  would  feel  some  hesitation 
in  telling  me  dangerous  secrets,  not  being  quite  sure  that  I 
should  not  reveal  them  under  personal  pressure.  At  any 
rate,  those  letters,  which  I  destroyed  years  afterwards,  re- 
mained in  my  pocket,  and  I  was  glad  in  the  end  that  I  had 
refused  to  gain  a  temporary  victory  by  reading  them  out. 

For  the  time  being,  however,  the  outcome  was  most 
disastrous  to  the  Social-Democratic  Federation  and  to  me. 
Morris  and  his  group  departed.  We  were  left  very  short  of 
funds,  with  a  general  impression  outside  that  we  were  wholly 
in  the  wrong,  and  with  a  natural  feeling  of  exasperation  on 
our  side  that  a  valuable  organisation  should  be  broken  up 
in  this  unfortunate  way.  Our  unwearying  and  noble  cham- 
pion of  the  proletariat,  Jack  Williams,  who  had  been  a 
military  Socialist  before  any  of  us  came  into  the  movement, 
said  to  Morris  as  he  left  the  room  at  Westminster  Palace 
Chambers  after  the  vote  had  been  taken,  "  Whatever  you 
may  think  now,  Morris,  you  are  making  the  mistake  of 
your  life."  That  same  evening  Michael  Davitt  came  in 
haste  to  our  house  in  Devonshire  Street  and  said  directly 
he  got  inside,  "I  have  come  up  to  congratulate  you,  Hynd- 
man.  You  are  the  luckiest  man  I  ever  knew.  You  have 
got  rid  of  all  your  enemies  at  once."  I  told  him  in  reply  I 
could  not  look  upon  the  matter  from  that  point  of  view  at 
all,  and  that  I  regarded  the  breaking  away  of  such  a  set  of 
people,  in  so  bitter  and  unreasonable  a  frame  of  mind,  as 
nothing  short  of  a  national  disaster.  This  it  proved  to  be, 


330          .THE  RECORD   OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

and  we  have  not  recovered  even  yet  from  the  effects  of 
Morris's  impetuous  error. 

So  Morris,  Bax,  Scheu,  the  Avelings  and  others  went  off, 
founded  the  Socialist  League  and  established  the  Common- 
weal. This  most  deplorable  result  of  slander  and  lying  set 
the  movement  back  fully  twenty  years,  and  gave  the  op- 
portunity for  the  commencement  of  that  very  course  of 
compromise  and  political  intrigue  in  the  Socialist  move- 
ment which  Morris  himself  was  most  anxious  to  avoid.  It 
was  the  saddest  episode  in  the  entire  course  of  my  Socialist 
career;  and  though  during  the  whole  of  the  eight  years 
that  the  League  and  its  organ  lasted  I  refrained  from  attack- 
ing Morris  or  replying  in  Justice  to  the  virulent  diatribes 
against  us  which  appeared  in  the  Commonweal,  feeling  sure 
that  one  day  he  would  see  that  he  had  been  quite  mistaken ; 
yet  writing  now  seven-and-twenty  years  after  the  original 
dispute  and  with  the  coolness  which  such  passing  of  time 
brings  with  it,  I  cannot  exonerate  Morris  and  his  group 
from  the  responsibility  of  having  done  more  to  hinder  the 
progress  of  genuine  Socialism  in  England  than  any  people 
who  have  ever  opposed  it  or  been  connected  with  it.  The 
Labour  Party  could  never  have  existed,  as  a  virtually  sub- 
sidised wing  of  the  Liberal  Party,  had  Morris  and  his  friends 
remained  with  us  throughout. 

So  much  use  has  been  made  of  Morris's  difference  with 
me  to  make  out  that  I  am  an  impossible  man  to  work  with ; 
that  Morris  was  altogether  opposed  to  my  opinions;  and 
that  I  have  been,  in  short,  the  curse  of  Socialism  in  Great 
Britain,  as  was  proclaimed  by  Marx  and  Engels  in  their 
Letters  to  Sorge  referred  to  elsewhere,  and  has  been  reaffirmed 
by  Hardie,  Macdonald  and  Snowden  —  all  this  I  say  has 
been  so  unscrupulously  used  against  me  personally,  even 
by  Mr.  Mac  kail,  William  Morris's  biographer,  who  knew 
better  perfectly  well  at  the  time  he  penned  his  misrepresen- 
tations, that  I  feel  it  incumbent  upon  me  to  give  here  the 


WILLIAM  MORRIS  331 

finish  of  this  business.  The  Socialist  League  and  the  Com- 
monweal fought  on  against  us  up  to  1892;  the  worser  ele- 
ments which  traded  upon  Morris's  generosity  and  high- 
mindedness  steadily  getting  the  upper  hand.  At  last  Morris 
himself  got  tired  of  the  strange  people  who  had  gathered 
around  him,  and  the  whole  thing  broke  up  after  they  had 
done  some  good  but  far  more  mischief  in  their  bootless 
campaign.  I  not  long  afterwards  wrote  to  him  and  received 
from  him  the  following  letter :  — 

December  22. 

MY  DEAR  HYNDMAN  —  I  hope  you  will  excuse  me  for  not  an- 
swering your  letter,  for  which  I  heartily  apologise.  The  fact  is 
that  it  was  difficult  to  answer  at  the  time,  because  nothing  was 
definitely  settled  as  to  Commonweal,  and  afterwards  I  let  the 
matter  slip  out  of  my  memory  amidst  my  multifarious  businesses. 
I  now  thank  you  for  your  friendly  letter,  but  really  I  have  come 
to  the  conclusion  that  no  form  of  journalism  is  suited  to  me,  and 
I  shall  not  write  at  present  in  any  journal.  I  want  to  pull  myself 
together  after  what  has  been,  to  me  at  least,  a  defeat;  and  I 
have  got  a  lot  of  literary  work  on  hand  including  two  works  more 
or  less  propagandist;  to  wit  my  "News  from  Nowhere"  and  the 
book  that  I  have  been  working  at  with  Bax  which  I  am  at  last 
going  to  tackle.  —  With  best  wishes  from  Yours  very  truly, 

(Signed)     WILLIAM  MORRIS. 

From  that  time  onwards  our  old  relations  were  gradually 
restored.  He  went  down  to  Burnley  to  support  my  candi- 
dature in  that  town,  and  addressed  a  large  public  meeting 
in  my  favour.  Morris  made  this  meeting  the  occasion  for 
one  of  the  most  generous  actions  I  ever  heard  of.  At  the 
commencement  of  his  speech  he  said  in  his  impulsive  way: 
"Now  before  I  talk  about  Hyndman  and  his  candidature  I 
want  to  tell  you  people  something:  In  1884  Hyndman  and 
I  had  a  great  quarrel  and  I  have  to  say  this:  that  he  was 
quite  right  and  I  was  quite  wrong."  That  was  very  noble 
of  Morris.  I  believe  it  to  be  the  precise  truth ;  but  certainly 
I  should  never  have  asked  him  or  expected  him  to  put  it  in 
that  way. 


332  THE  RECORD   OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

After  the  breakdown  of  the  Socialist  League,  Morris  was 
very  anxious  to  bring  about  Socialist  Unity.  To  that  end 
a  series  of  gatherings  of  delegates  of  the  Social-Democratic 
Federation,  the  Fabian  Society  and  Morris's  followers  was 
arranged  at  Kelmscott  House.  Morris  had  an  idea  that  we 
of  the  Social-Democratic  Federation  should  be  the  difficult 
ones  to  arrange  with.  I  assured  him  we  should  not;  but 
that  the  trouble  would  come  from  Shaw,  Webb  and  the 
Fabian  Society.  This  Morris  would  not  believe.  At  first, 
and  even  throughout  and  to  the  end  of  the  sittings,  we 
got  on  swimmingly.  We  were  all  agreed  on  essentials,  and 
our  unanimity  now  that  we  did  agree  was  certainly  won- 
derful. At  last  I  was  deputed  to  draft  a  Manifesto  on  lines 
discussed  and  determined.  I  did  so,  and  with  little  altera- 
tion it  was  issued  to  the  world  as  the  unanimous  declara- 
tion of  English  Socialists,  with  the  signatures  of  all  the 
delegates  and  secretaries  of  the  bodies  represented,  includ- 
ing that  of  Bernard  Shaw,  who  was  present  at  all  the  meet- 
ings and  discussions.  Morris  was  delighted.  His  dearest 
hope  was,  as  he  thought,  realised;  for  the  Independent 
Labour  Party,  not  at  that  time  a  Socialist  organisation, 
would,  he  believed,  be  compelled  to  come  along  with  us. 
He  even  twitted  me  with  my  pessimism,  I  recall,  when  we 
were  chatting  in  his  house.  "Wait  a  bit,"  I  rejoined,  "we 
haven't  done  with  Shaw  and  the  Fabians  yet.'7 

Sure  enough,  the  ink  was  scarcely  dry  on  the  Manifesto 
they  had  signed,  pledging  all  Socialists  to  act  together  as 
an  independent  party  in  a  revolutionary  though  pacific 
sense,  than,  as  I  anticipated,  the  Fabians  upset  the  whole 
agreement  and  carried  their  policy  of  permeation  to  that 
point  of  permanent  effacement  which  they  have  pursued 
ever  since.  It  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  this  to  him  most 
exasperating  failure  to  bring  about  a  fusion  of  Socialists, 
coming  on  top  of  the  collapse  of  the  Socialist  League, 
shortened  Morris's  life.  I  rarely  saw  him  afterwards  with- 


WILLIAM  MORRIS  333 

out  his  referring  to  it.  As  a  result  he  practically  rejoined 
the  Social-Democratic  Federation,  to  which  Bax,  the  Avel- 
ings,  Scheu  and  the  rest  of  the  dissentients  also  returned, 
and  it  is  a  consolation  to  some  of  us  who,  in  spite  of  his  sad 
action  in  1884  still  cherish  his  memory,  that  the  very  last 
speech  which  he  ever  delivered  from  a  public  platform  was 
at  the  Annual  New  Year's  Meeting  of  the  Social-Democratic 
Federation  on  January  3,  1896,  in  St.  Martin's  Hall  when 
he  spoke  as  follows :  — 

William  Morris,  who  was  received  with  tremendous  applause, 
in  seconding  the  resolution,  said  he  had  to  congratulate  those 
present  on  their  meeting  and  on  the  work  which  the  Social-Demo- 
cratic Federation  had  done;  they  had  always  kept  the  revolu- 
tionary principle  before  them,  had  always  made  it  clear  that  they 
understood  that  no  amelioration  was  any  good,  that  no  patching 
up  was  possible,  that  nothing  could  be  accomplished  until  the 
workers  were  really  free,  until  they  had  control  of  their  own 
means  of  life.  The  condition  of  things  into  which  the  present 
Government  seemed  to  have  got  itself  was  due  entirely  to  the 
general  position  of  labour  and  capital  throughout  civilisation. 
(Cheers.)  As  far  as  America  was  concerned  they  were  in  that 
position  that  at  any  time  a  quarrel  might  arise  and  we  could  not 
face  it  because  we  chose  to  hang  on  with  such  desperation  to  the 
colony  we  happened  to  have  over  there.  If  it  were  not  for  Canada 
what  should  we  care  about  America?  He  had  never  believed  in 
any  solid  danger  with  reference  to  America  at  the  present  moment. 
In  some  way  or  another  we  should  "back  down,"  and  they  would 
do  the  same,  because  we  were  each  other's  customers,  and  we 
could  not  afford  to  go  out  and  buy  "shooting-irons"  to  kill  our 
own  customers.  (Cheers.)  As  far  as  Africa  was  concerned  there 
was  a  kind  of  desperation  egging  on  all  nations  to  make  some- 
thing of  that  hitherto  undeveloped  country;  and  they  were  no 
doubt  developing  it  with  a  vengeance.  (Laughter  and  cheers.) 
When  he  saw  the  last  accounts  about  the  Transvaal  he  almost 
wished  he  could  be  a  Kaffir  for  five  minutes  in  order  to  dance 
around  the  "ring."  (Laughter  and  cheers.)  He  thought  it  was 
a  case  of  a  pack  of  thieves  quarrelling  about  their  booty.  The 
Boers  had  stolen  their  land  from  the  people  it  had  belonged  to; 
people  had  come  in  to  help  them  to  develop  their  stolen  property 
and  now  wanted  to  steal  it  themselves.  (Laughter  and  cheers.) 
The  real  fact,  however,  that  we  had  to  deal  with  was  that  we  lived 
by  stealing  —  that  was,  by  wasting  —  all  the  labour  of  the  workmen. 


334  THE  RECORD   OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

Not  long  after  this  he  was  taken  seriously  ill  and  a  long 
trip  to  Norway  did  him  no  good.  I  went  to  Kelmscott 
House  several  times  to  see  him.  He  had  been  deeply  en- 
gaged for  some  time  in  bringing  out  those  fine  works  which 
came  from  the  Kelmscott  Press  and  gave  a  new  impetus  to 
the  art  of  printing  and  the  decoration  of  books.  When  I 
sat  and  talked  to  him  on  these  visits  he  was,  as  a  rule,  en- 
gaged in  designing  some  illustration,  or  border,  or  initial 
letter,  for  those  splendid  reproductions. 

The  last  time  I  saw  him  he  seemed  much  better  than  he 
had  been,  and  talked  with  almost  his  old  vivacity  and 
brightness.  It  was  the  last  flicker  of  the  lamp  before  final 
extinction.  Leaning  on  my  arm  he  walked  with  me  round 
the  garden  at  the  back  of  his  house,  and  I  well  remember 
his  saying:  "Of  course  if  this  is  to  be  a  temporary  illness 
and  I  am  to  get  the  better  of  it  and  be  able  to  take  part 
in  active  life  again  I  shouldn't  so  much  mind  being  laid  up 
for  a  few  months.  But  if  this  is  the  end  of  all  things  I 
shouldn't  like  it  a  bit.  This  has  been  a  jolly  good  world 
to  me  when  all  is  said  and  I  don't  wish  to  leave  it  yet  awhile." 
There  was  no  feeling,  therefore,  at  all  that  his  end  was 
approaching;  nor  could  I  have  believed  that  we  were 
within  ten  days  of  his  death  as  he  took  again  his  seat  in 
the  chair  he  had  risen  from  and  went  on  with  his  drawing. 
But  I  never  saw  William  Morris  alive  again. 

If  Morris,  in  full  accord  with  his  artistic  genius  and  tem- 
perament, partly  created  for  himself  the  queer  sort  of 
people  who  at  one  time  gathered  around  him  and  the  grievous 
disappointments  which  befell  him,  he  stuck  steadily  to  revo- 
lutionary Socialism  from  1882  to  the  end  of  his  life.  He 
was  an  unconscious  Socialist  before,  but  he  was  a  conscious 
Socialist  ever  after.  It  has  always  appeared  to  me  that 
some  of  his  relations  and  intimate  friends  who  have  tried 
their  utmost  to  obliterate  this  portion  of  his  career,  have 
done  his  memory  a  very  sad  disservice.  Millions  will  re- 


WILLIAM  MORRIS  335 

member  Morris  as  the  brilliant  re-incarnation  of  mediaeval 
universality  in  art  and  craft  and  letters  who,  with  ample 
means,  living  in  the  highest  cultivation  and  surrounded  by 
all  that  could  make  existence  enjoyable,  threw  himself 
heart  and  soul  into  the  thankless  task  of  endeavouring  to 
uplift  the  disinherited  classes  from  their  sad  plight  of  over- 
work, anxiety,  care  and  misery  and  suffering  —  millions  I 
say,  will  think  of  him  as  the  poet  and  artist  vainly  speaking 
at  the  street  corner,  selling  literature  down  the  Strand  and 
lecturing  and  writing  day  after  day  and  year  after  year  for 
the  sake  of  an  ideal  of  which  he  could  scarcely  hope  himself 
to  see  the  realisation,  who  could  never  appreciate  his  verse 
or  his  prose,  or  understand  his  efforts  to  revolutionise  the 
arts  of  decoration  and  furnishing  of  the  home  amid  a  Philis- 
tine and  an  ignorant  generation.  As  a  singer  of  the  pro- 
letariat, a  toiler  himself,  John  Leslie  wrote  of  him  in  Justice 
at  his  death :  — 

For  this  we  love  you  and  for  this  revere  you; 

For  this  your  name  shall  ever  cherished  be; 
For  this  our  children's  children  still  shall  hear  you, 

As  sounds  your  voice  across  the  silent  sea. 

That  is  the  feeling  we  all  have  about  William  Morris. 
And  the  reason  for  it  is  quite  obvious.  Though  we  are 
compelled  to  recall,  as  a  matter  of  history,  the  mischief  he 
did  to  the  movement  by  his  impulsive  and  unjustified  action 
in  December  1884,  we  recognise  that  even  this  is  over- 
shadowed by  the  great  help  he  gave  from  the  artistic  and 
literary  side.  Brought  up  as  even  the  best-educated  are  in 
this  woefully  depressing,  gloomy  and  money-hunting  nation, 
destitute  alike  of  French  gaiety  and  of  German  capacity  for 
sober  enjoyment,  the  inculcation  of  the  ideal  of  culture  and 
beauty  and  art  and  delight  in  nature  for  all  was  of  over- 
whelming importance.  This  Morris  brought  home  to  us 
more  than  any  other  man,  great  and  even  splendid  as 
Walter  Crane's  services  have  been  and  are  in  the  same  field. 


336  THE  RECORD  OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

Last  time  I  was  in  Vienna  I  strolled  into  the  Cathedral 
of  San  Stefan.  A  service  was  going  on,  and  I  remained 
and  looked  and  listened.  I  was  impressed  with  the  sur- 
roundings and  the  ceremonial:  the  semi-darkness,  the 
candles,  the  vestments,  the  music,  the  colouring  of  the 
stained  glass,  the  incense,  the  appealing  prayers,  all  found 
an  echo  and  a  response  within  me.  Though  well  acquainted 
with  the  history  and  origin  of  the  Catholic  Church,  its  deep 
undying  indebtedness  to  the  gorgeous  trappings  of  Pagan- 
ism, which  it  absorbed  and  was  absorbed  by,  though  I 
knew  too  that  at  the  back  of  all  this  sumptuous  magnifi- 
cence and  aesthetic  beauty  there  stood  that  superstitious 
enslavement  of  the  intellect  and  organised  priestly  domi- 
nation we  are  bound  to  fight  against  for  ever;  yet  for  a 
time  I  gave  myself  up  deliberately  to  the  sentiment  of  the 
place,  and  for  once  in  my  life  was  wafted  into  the  sensuous 
supernaturalism  of  a  bygone  age.  Then  as  I  rose  and  went 
out,  I  wanted  it  all  in  another  and  a  higher  form  for  us  and 
for  those  who  shall  supremely  enjoy  where  we  have  only 
toiled  and  suffered  and  hoped. 

William  Morris  did  much  more  than  we  perhaps  yet 
know  to  put  us  on  the  right  track  to  this  consummation  and 
fulfilment  of  the  ideal  side  of  our  great  material  creed. 
Yet,  strange  to  say,  Morris  had  no  knowledge  of,  or  appre- 
ciation for,  music.  The  art  which  is  nearest  to  the  realisa- 
tion of  Socialism,  alike  in  its  individual  and  collective 
expression,  left  him  untouched  as  it  did  Wilhelm  Lieb- 
knecht.  But  in  all  else  he  had  the  fullest  conception  of 
what  mankind  will  attain  to  when,  freed  from  the  com- 
petitive meanness  and  squalor  of  our  day,  the  higher  facul- 
ties of  our  race  will  find  their  complete  outlet  and  develop- 
ment. And  that  conception  he  imparted  to  others.  This 
was,  perhaps,  the  greatest  of  his  works. 


CHAPTER  XXII 

PROPAGANDA  AND  PERSONALITIES 

ONE  break  in  a  party  almost  certainly  begets  another ;  but 
for  two  years  after  the  Morris  upset  we  went  on  very 
well,  except  for  shortness  of  money,  which  hampered  us  in 
many  ways,  and  at  last  compelled  us  to  produce  Justice, 
chiefly  by  our  own  gratuitous  work,  in  a  dingy  but  cheap 
ground  floor  and  cellarage  in  Sandland  Street,  Bedford  Row. 
I  confess  I  never  thought  I  could  have  set  up  type  myself, 
and  I  admit  a  worse  compositor  could  scarcely  have  been 
found,  even  amongst  the  most  unskilled  workers  of  Lon- 
don, than  I  was.  Others  ran  me  pretty  close  for  ineptitude 
at  the  same  occupation;  but  happily  we  had  some  of  the 
best  compositors  in  London,  who  had  embraced  the  cause 
—  it  was  the  cause  in  those  days  and  no  mistake  —  who 
lent  us  invaluable  assistance. 

When  I  see  a  Cabinet  Minister  of  quite  third-rate  abilities 
flaunting  along  in  Court  dress  and  receiving  £5000  a  year 
for  betraying  his  own  class  by  selling  the  work  of  such  men 
as  these,  and  the  lives  of  such  martyrs  to  Socialism  as 
Pearson  and  Sinclair  and  Pickard  Cambridge  and  Geldart 
and  Culwick  and  Evans,  for  his  personal  gain  and  emolu- 
ment; when  I  observe  intriguing  mediocrities  deliberately 
heading  back  progress  and  posing  as  Socialist  statesmen, 
while  all  the  time  they  have  their  private  arrangements 
with  the  leaders  of  a  capitalist  faction  for  their  own  benefit, 
my  memory  takes  me  back  instinctively  to  the  days  of 
Sandland  Street,  and  the  long  long  years  of  wholly  un- 
remunerated  sacrifice  which  have  enabled  these  recent 
z  337 


338  THE  RECORD   OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

intruders  to  trade  away  the  movement  in  this  commercial 
fashion. 

It  is  all  fine  to  look  back  upon,  but  it  was  no  joke  at 
the  time.  There  was  but  one  thing  to  be  thought  of — 
the  paper  must  be  got  out.  We  laughed  and  chaffed  and 
patted  one  another  on  the  back,  but  the  work  was  done. 
When,  however,  influenza  struck  us  seriously,  in  the  time 
when  influenza  was  a  really  dangerous  disease,  that  was 
a  blow.  How  we  got  through  it  I  really  don't  know.  It  was 
double  and  even  treble  duty  for  those  who  kept  well,  or  for 
those  who  came  back  when  others  fell  ill.  Happily,  I  myself 
never  suffered,  though  I  was  in  the  thick  of  it  all  through. 
But  when  one  night  Hazell,  our  head  printer,  in  taking  the 
" forme"  for  our  front  page  down  from  the  ground  floor  to 
the  cellarage  let  it  tumble  out  of  his  hands  and  "pied"  all 
the  type,  we  thought  our  last  week  had  come,  and  that 
Justice  must  cease  to  inspire  and  enlighten  this  world  of 
misrule.  However,  there  was  nothing  for  it  but  to  set  the 
type  all  over  again,  weary  as  we  were,  and  Justice  appeared 
as  usual  that  week  to  encourage  the  comrades  and  keep 
the  red  flag  flying. 

I  wonder  we  succeeded  during  those  years  of  stress  and 
strain,  especially  with  that  well-printed,  well-written,  and 
well-got-up  paper  the  Commonweal  running  in  competition 
with  us;  but  succeed  we  did.  Just  as  the  Social-Demo- 
cratic Party  has  lasted  much  longer  than  any  other  party 
of  the  people  ever  set  on  foot  in  this  country,  so  Justice 
has  held  its  own  for  many  more  years  than  any  other  pro- 
letarian journal  ever  founded  in  Great  Britain. 

It  was  in  this  period,  also,  that  we  were  carrying  on  our 
long,  weary,  and  depressing  agitation  on  behalf  of  the  un- 
employed, as  well  as  our  never-ceasing  campaign  for  free 
speech  in  the  open  spaces  of  the  streets  and  in  Hyde  Park, 
which  led  many  of  our  old  comrades  to  gaol.  In  this  work 
John  Burns  took  an  active  part.  He  had  joined  our  party 


PROPAGANDA  AND  PERSONALITIES  339 

early  in  1884  and  though  he  was  at  that  time  as  ignorant 
and  uncouth  a  recruit  as  ever  came  among  us,  he  soon  dis- 
played qualities  of  street  oratory  and  self-advertisement 
which  were  at  the  time  very  valuable  to  us.  I  set  to  work, 
therefore,  in  conjunction  with  Champion  and  the  Misses 
Roche  to  educate  him,  and  he  proved  a  very  apt  though 
superficial  pupil,  his  colossal  conceit  preventing  him  from 
ever  thoroughly  going  to  the  bottom  of  any  subject.  I 
need  scarcely  say  that  had  we  known  the  use  to  which  he 
was  to  put  our  tuition  we  should  all  of  us  have  left  him  to 
get  out  of  his  ignorance  as  best  he  could.  And  here  I 
may  add,  what  no  doubt  his  Liberal  purchasers  have  long 
since  discovered,  that  during  the  years  that  Burns  was  in 
the  Social-Democratic  Federation  he  was  not  of  the  very 
slightest  use  in  committee.  I  do  not  think  he  ever  suggested 
anything  which  was  of  value,  and  it  is  the  greatest  mistake 
possible  to  suppose  that  he  is  formidable  in  debate.  Most 
amusing  evidence  of  this  was  publicly  afforded  not  long 
before  he  entered  into  those  engagements  with  the  Liberal 
Party  that  eventually  landed  him  in  the  Cabinet. 

For  some  reason  Burns  thought  proper  to  make  a  violent 
attack  upon  Quelch.  It  was  decided  the  matter  should  be 
debated  out.  Accordingly,  the  Bricklayers'  Hall  in  the 
Blackfriars  Road  was  taken  and  a  set  debate  between  Burns 
and  Quelch  was  arranged.  Quelch  was  not  nearly  so  well 
known  among  our  own  people  as  he  is  now,  and  it  was 
quite  the  general  impression  that  Burns  would  easily  get 
the  better  of  him.  Being  intimately  acquainted  with  both 
the  men  I  was  of  a  different  opinion ;  but  I  was  in  a  small 
minority.  The  discussion  was  as  dramatic  and  amusing  a 
scene  in  its  way  as  I  have  ever  been  present  at.  Burns 
opened  his  indictment  with  great  vigour  and  a  fine  piling 
up  of  denunciation  and  adjectives  on  Quelch's  head.  That 
malefactor's  delinquencies  were,  in  fact,  displayed  before 
the  audience  in  all  their  atrocious  turpitude.  He  really  did 


340  THE  RECORD   OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

appear  to  be  as  bad  a  man  as  verbose  and  vehement  rhetoric 
could  make  him  out  to  be.  Even  some  of  Quelch's  friends 
wondered  what  the  result  of  it  all  would  be.  For  Burns's 
periods  sound  quite  imposing  until  you  listen  to  them 
seriously,  when  the  absence  of  argument  at  once  strikes  the 
hearer,  and,  as  those  present  were  not  sufficiently  critical  to 
note  this  drawback  at  the  moment,  Burns  sat  down  amid 
great  applause. 

Then  Quelch  had  his  innings.  He  began  lamely  and 
awkwardly,  as  if  not  quite  sure  of  himself,  as  he  always  did 
in  those  days.  Burns  sat  enveloped  in  multitudinous 
smiles,  and  was  constantly  turning  round  to  call  attention 
to  his  superiority  and  his  triumph.  This  did  not  last  long. 
Quelch  began  to  argue.  Burns  was  compelled  to  pay  atten- 
tion. Quelch's  argument  developed  into  retort  and  sar- 
casm. Burns  became  uneasy  and  fidgeted  in  his  seat. 
Quelch  went  on  to  parody  Burns's  rhetorical  style  and  to 
quote  some  of  Burns's  own  robustious  periods  against  him 
in  the  burlesque  vein.  Laughter  began  to  roll  out  from 
the  audience :  interruptions  became  frequent  from  Burns. 
More  ridicule,  more  unexpected  jokes  and  humorous  argu- 
ment from  Quelch.  The  whole  Hall  was  now  laughing  in 
chorus,  and  Burns  was  up  and  down  like  a  jack-in-the-box, 
the  Chairman  of  the  evening  trying  in  vain  to  keep  him  in 
order.  The  more  Quelch  poked  fun  at  him,  the  more  furious 
became  Burns  and  the  more  uproarious  grew  the  laughter. 
At  last  Burns  could  stand  it  no  longer.  He  got  up,  took 
his  hat,  and  rushed  out  of  the  hall,  damning  us  all  roundly, 
while  we  rocked  with  glee.  It  was  the  most  extraordinary 
exhibition  of  outraged  personal  arrogance  I  ever  saw.  Of 
course  the  vote  went  unanimously  against  him. 

I  had  some  strange  experiences  with  Burns  myself  but 
nothing  quite  equal  to  this.  On  one  occasion,  however,  I 
went  to  Sydney  Hall,  Battersea,  to  deliver  an  address  on 
the  disadvantages  of  compromise  in  the  Socialist  propa- 


PROPAGANDA  AND  PERSONALITIES  341 

ganda,  with  special  reference  to  what  happened  after  the 
great  Dock  Strike ;  when  the  £35,000  suddenly  contributed 
from  Australia  had  saved  that  remarkable  movement  from 
collapse.  Burns  and  Tom  Mann  thought,  perhaps  not 
altogether  without  reason,  that  this  speech  of  mine  would 
be,  in  part  at  least,  a  criticism  of  their  action,  and  they 
were  resolved  to  oppose  me.  At  any  rate,  they  were  both 
there  when  I  entered  the  Hall,  seated  directly  in  front, 
close  to  the  little  raised  platform  from  which  I  was  to  speak. 
I  delivered  myself  of  my  message  to  the  Socialists  of  Batter- 
sea,  and  Mann  was  the  first  to  reply.  He  was,  as  he  always 
has  been  in  regard  to  myself,  personally  most  courteous, 
and  said  among  other  things  that  no  matter  how  widely 
we  might  differ  or  how  sharply  I  might  criticise  his  doings 
he  should  never  forget  that  he  owed  his  knowledge  of  Social- 
ism to  me  —  which  is  a  good  deal  more  than  many  who 
have  been  much  more  indebted  to  me  will  admit  — 
and  made  a  very  good  speech  generally  on  the  neces- 
sity of  giving  way  and  compromising  at  certain  times, 
a  view  of  the  case  which  I  think  he  would  scarcely  put 
now. 

Mann  carried  the  audience  with  him,  and  then  Burns 
rose  in  wrath  burning  with  zeal  for  my  immolation  and  full 
of  incendiary  oratory  to  that  end.  He  had  not  spoken  two 
sentences  before  his  voice  gave  way  completely  and  he 
could  not  utter  another  word,  much  as  he  strained  himself 
to  do  so.  It  was  a  very  painful  spectacle.  I  had  some 
throat  lozenges  in  my  pocket  and  leaned  across  and  offered 
him  some.  " Don't  take  them  Jack,  don't  take  them," 
cried  Mrs.  Burns,  from  which  I  judged  the  worthy  lady 
thought  I  carried  about  the  means  of  early  dissolution  for 
hostile  speakers,  in  readiness  for  such  an  opportunity. 
Burns  having  thus  accomplished  a  brilliant  flash  of  silence, 
John  Ward,  now  M.P.  for  Hanley,  arose  in  his  might  — 
Ward  was  also  a  Revolutionary  Socialist  in  those  days  — 


342  THE  RECORD   OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

and  laid  about  him  with  vigour,  denouncing  John  Burns 
and  exposing  his  manifold  intrigues  and  treacheries  with 
much  gusto.  It  was  vastly  edifying  at  the  time  and  is  even 
more  instructive  now.  Cynicism  is  the  seamy  side  of 
enthusiasm. 

At  our  Manchester  Conference  of  1887  I  had  another 
experience  of  master  "Jack."  At  that  time  there  was  an 
idea  on  the  part  of  Burns  and  his  friends  that  I  stood  in 
their  way,  which  was  scarcely  possible,  as  my  way,  as  it 
has  been  clearly  shown,  was  not  theirs.  Nevertheless 
Champion  and  Burns  having  then  left  us  to  intrigue,  not 
with  the  Liberals  but  with  the  Tories,  the  latter  brought 
down  some  London  delegates  and  assailed  me  quite  unex- 
pectedly with  much  rancour.  I  have  always  said  and  I 
repeat  it  to-day,  after  more  than  thirty  years  of  public 
agitation  and  platformery,  that  fluent  and  ready  speech 
counts  for  far  too  much  in  political  life.  Burns  attacked 
me  personally  very  vehemently  and  was,  as  usual,  greatly 
applauded  by  his  set.  I  don't  think  anyone  will  deny 
that  I  had  already  done  a  very  great  deal  in  the  way  of 
spreading  the  light  by  writing  and  organising  for  the  move- 
ment; but,  if  I  had  not  chanced  to  possess  the  faculty  of 
quick  retort  as  well,  all  this  and  a  great  deal  more  of  un- 
seen work  might  have  gone  for  nothing.  As  it  was, 
when  it  came  to  the  vote,  Burns  was  in  a  minority  of 
one,  only  his  own  hand  being  held  up  in  favour  of  his 
resolution. 

And  yet  I  am  far  from  denying  that  the  man,  with  all 
his  conceit  and  treacherous  ways,  did  good  work  in  his 
blusterous  fashion.  On  the  whole  I  think  he  was  in  those 
days  the  best  stump  orator  I  ever  heard ;  not  so  argumen- 
tative as  Bradlaugh,  but  more  fluent,  with  a  finer  voice 
and  a  more  taking  appearance.  Certainly,  too,  a  great  deal 
more  unscrupulous  in  making  his  effects.  We  went  down 
one  day  to  a  meeting  of  the  unemployed  on  the  Embank- 


PROPAGANDA  AND  PERSONALITIES  343 

ment,  our  platform  being  the  pedestal  of  the  Obelisk. 
Burns  and  a  few  others  had  lunched  at  our  house,  and 
Burns  had  enjoyed  what  the  Americans  would  certainly 
call  a  " square  meal,"  presumably  from  its  tendency  to  make 
the  consumer  round  —  and  when  we  got  down  to  the  Em- 
bankment seemed  in  particularly  good  fettle. 

Judge,  therefore,  of  our  astonishment  when  the  first 
sentences  of  his  speech,  delivered  in  his  powerful  tones,  ran 
as  follows:  —  "The  upper  classes  tell  us  that  the  unem- 
ployed in  our  midst  consist  only  of  drunkards  and  loafers 
and  wastrels,  men  who  won't  work  or  who  have  no  trade 
in  their  hands.  Now  here  am  I,  a  skilled  engineer,  belong- 
ing to  the  Union  of  my  trade,  and  I  can't  get  work.  I 
have  never  touched  liquor  in  my  life,  I  am  as  thrifty  as  any 
man  can  be  who  must  keep  his  wife  and  himself  in  health. 
I'll  do  a  day's  work  with  anyone.  Yet  here  I  stand  as 
unemployed  and  as  hungry  as  any  of  you,  for  neither  bit 
nor  sup  has  passed  my  lips"  -  and  his  voice  rang  down  the 
road  far  beyond  the  crowd  —  "for  four-and-twenty  hours." 
It  came  like  a  bombshell  on  us  all,  and  how  Champion, 
Jack  Williams  and  the  rest  of  us  kept  from  laughter  I  do 
not  know.  It  would  have  been  well  if  Burns  had  confined 
his  mendacity  to  a  harmless  "terminological  inexactitude" 
of  this  sort. 

It  is  impossible  not  to  compare  such  a  career  as  that  of 
**  Williams  with  Burns's.  There  is  no  man  in  the  movement 
at  home  or  abroad  who  has  done  more  for  his  class,  and 
for  the  most  hopeless  and  miserable  of  that  class  than  J.  E. 
Williams.  He  was  a  Socialist  before  any  of  us  and  here 
to-day,  after  forty  years  of  continuous  agitation,  under 
most  trying  conditions,  he  remains  the  energetic,  self- 
sacrificing,  indefatigable  agitator  that  he  was  when  he 
began ;  though,  except  in  the  general  progress  of  our  ideas, 
he  has  had  little  indeed  to  encourage  him  in  his  splendid 
work.  Even  we  Social  Democrats  ourselves  scarcely  ap- 


344     THE  RECORD  OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

predate  Jack  Williams  at  his  real  worth,  or  at  all  times  fully 
comprehend  the  dignity  and  greatness  of  this  indefatigable 
little  figure.  Born  of  the  proletariat,  living  with  the  pro- 
letariat, fighting  for  the  proletariat,  suffering  for  the  pro- 
letariat, when  he  too  could,  quite  as  easily  as  Burns,  have 
made  a  good  and  easy  position  for  himself  by  turning 
against  the  men  and  women  from  whom  he  sprang.  It  has 
been  quite  wonderful.  Never  an  agitation,  never  a  strike, 
never  an  open-air  debate  in  this  metropolis,  nor  indeed 
anywhere  throughout  the  country  where  his  service  could 
be  useful,  but  Jack  Williams  has  been  well  to  the  front. 
Always  vigorous,  always  cheery,  always  ready  to  do  the 
hardest  and  least  advertised  work,  Jack  Williams  is  to  me 
a  constant  cause  for  amazement  and  admiration. 

Nor  let  anyone  imagine  for  a  moment  that  Williams  is 
ignorant,  or  cannot  hold  his  own  with  the  men  of  the  class 
above  him.  There  is  not  a  single  speaker  in  the  whole 
Labour  Party  in  the  House  of  Commons  whom  I  would 
rather  trust  than  John  Williams  to  uphold  the  cause  of 
Socialism  before  an  educated  audience  as  a  representative 
of  his  class.  More  than  a  quarter  of  a  century  ago  Mr. 
Arnold  White,  now  "Vanoc"  of  the  Referee,  challenged  the 
Social-Democratic  Federation  to  debate  Socialism  with  him, 
or  the  Social-Democratic  Federation  challenged  Mr.  Arnold 
White,  I  forget  which.  In  any  case  an  arrangement  was 
come  to  by  which  a  set  debate  was  to  be  held  in  the  Hall 
attached  to  the  Rev.  G.  S.  Reaney's  Congregational  Church 
at  the  East  End.  Williams  spoke  first  and  when,  during 
Mr.  Arnold  White's  reply,  I  saw  he  was  taking  no  notes  at 
all  I  sent  him  a  slip  of  paper  begging  him  to  do  so;  he 
read  it  through  and  merely  shook  his  head.  Yet  when  it 
came  to  his  turn  to  answer  he  never  missed  a  point,  and 
Mr.  White  himself  generously  admitted  afterwards  that  not 
only  was  he  amazed  at  the  extent  of  Williams's  knowledge 
and  his  readiness,  but  that  he  considered  our  little  champion 


PROPAGANDA  AND  PERSONALITIES  345 

got  the  best  of  it.  That  was  the  general  opinion.  When  I 
reflect  upon  the  hard  exhausting  work  that  Jack  Williams 
has  done  since  then,  for  practically  no  remuneration,  though 
he  had  only  to  trim  a  little  in  order  to  be  well  paid,  I  take 
off  my  hat  to  him  as  one  of  the  noblest  men  who  ever  fought 
under  the  Red  Flag. 


CHAPTER  XXIII 

A  SALON  AND  ITS  SURROUNDINGS 

AS  incidentally  mentioned,  through  being  interested  in  a 
mine  in  Utah  of  which  I  became  a  director,  I  got  to 
know  one  of  the  brothers  of  the  late  and  present  Lord  Stanley 
of  Alderley  very  well,  and  through  him  became  friends  of  the 
brilliant  and  charming  Mrs.  "Johnny"  Stanley,  afterwards 
better  known  as  Lady  Jeune  and  Lady  St.  Helier.  The 
gift  of  establishing  and  keeping  up  a  really  interesting  salon 
is  one  unfortunately  not  possessed  by  many  English  women. 
It  needs  an  amount  of  tact,  quickness,  knowledge,  and  self- 
sacrifice  which  few  possess  or  are  ready,  at  any  rate,  to  use 
in  this  direction.  It  is  difficult  to  say  in  what  the  art  con- 
sists of  bringing  men  and  women  together  of  agreeable  in- 
telligence and  of  that  indefinable  social  quality  which  wins 
others  to  them  —  sometimes  possessed  by  those  who  are 
quite  the  reverse  of  clever  —  and  intermingling  them  with 
people  of  less  attractive  personality  and  more  combative 
natures,  who,  with  a  different  hostess  and  amid  other  sur- 
roundings, might  find  meeting  one  another  at  close  quarters 
by  no  means  pleasant. 

But  whatever  the  faculty  may  be,  Lady  St.  Helier,  at 
the  time  I  speak  of,  possessed  it  in  a  very  high  degree. 
Beginning  on  a  small  scale,  with  frequent  gatherings  of 
more  or  less  intimate  friends,  her  circle  gradually  extended, 
until,  without  ever  arriving  at  the  disagreeable  point  where 
a  harmonious  coterie  degenerates  into  an  indifferent  crush, 
there  could  be  met  at  Lady  St.  Helier' s  house  in  Wimpole 
Street,  and  afterwards  in  Harley  Street,  many  of  the  most 

346 


A  SALON  AND  ITS  SURROUNDINGS  347 

distinguished  men  and  women  of  politics  and  letters  of  the 
period.  I  have  always  been  disinclined  to  write  about  such 
little  meetings  of  friends  and  acquaintances,  and  I  should 
not  do  so  now,  with  our  hostess  of  that  day  still  happily 
living  and  as  clever  and  vivacious  as  ever,  had  she  not 
kindly  given  me  her  permission.  The  width  of  her  sym- 
pathies may  have  been  somewhat  restricted  since,  but 
shortly  before  her  marriage  with  the  late  Lord  St.  Helier, 
she  sat  up  quite  late  one  night  at  our  house  singing  Jacobin 
songs  of  the  old  time,  in  alternation  with  revolutionary 
ditties  from  Prince  Kropotkin,  having  quite  possibly  listened 
earlier  in  the  day  to  the  animated  conversation  of  an  ultra- 
Conservative  like  Lord  Halsbury. 

Of  the  catholicity  of  the  company  in  her  own  salon, 
some  idea  may  be  formed  when  I  say  that  statesmen  and 
politicians,  men  of  letters  and  journalists,  of  the  most 
diverse  views,  were  constantly  to  be  found  sitting  at  her 
table  or  conversing  in  her  drawing-room.  In  the  very 
hottest  of  the  exceedingly  hot  days  of  the  blazing  Irish  con- 
troversy, even  Mr.  Parnell  and  Mr.  " Buckshot7'  Forster 
were  to  be  seen  at  her  private  receptions;  though  I  admit 
their  visits  were  so  conveniently  arranged  that  the  possi- 
bility of  their  encountering  one  another  on  the  staircase  or 
in  the  drawing-room  was  dexterously  rendered  very  remote. 
And  the  period  I  speak  of,  from  1876  to  1888,  was  a  very 
stirring  time  indeed.  First  the  Russo-Turkish  War  created 
a  good  deal  of  bad  blood,  and  then  the  bitter  Land  League 
and  Home  Rule  struggles  in  Ireland  evoked  an  amount  of 
ill  feeling  quite  unequalled  since.  It  takes  me  back  to 
another  and  quite  a  different  world,  to  the  days  when  I 
had  not,  as  some  of  my  old  friends  humorously  say,  given 
myself  over  to  riotous  living,  to  think  of  Madame  Novikoff 
at  the  height  of  her  influence  and  notoriety  —  Mr.  Gladstone 
having  just  walked  out  from  a  great  "Bulgarian  Atrocities" 
meeting  with  this  famous  Russian  nationalist  on  his  arm  — 


348  THE  RECORD   OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

seated  at  the  piano,  singing  none  too  well,  with  three  Tory 
Cabinet  Ministers  standing  beside  her  and  one  of  them  turn- 
ing over  the  pages  of  her  music. 

Sir  Theodore  Martin,  I  recall,  declined  to  make  that 
lady's  acquaintance,  very  politely,  but  very  decidedly.  I 
asked  him  why  he  had  no  desire  to  know  a  person  who 
then  was  so  much  to  the  front  in  the  political  world.  "Well," 
he  replied,  "my  position  is  rather  a  peculiar  one.  I  do  not 
say  for  a  moment  that  the  lady  is  not  perfectly  loyal  and 
discreet,  and  I  am  not  in  the  least  afraid  of  what  we  may 
say  to  one  another.  But  I  shrink  from  the  idea  of  any,  let 
us  say,  misunderstanding,  by  which  something  I  have  never 
uttered  may  appear  in  a  language  I  do  not  comprehend, 
and  then  come  back  here  as  my  sober  opinion.  I  have  no 
right  to  run  such  a  risk."  As  Sir  Theodore  held  at  the 
time  a  confidential  position  at  the  Court,  I  suppose  he  was 
right.  I  had  no  reason  for  similar  hesitation,  and  I  became 
acquainted  with  this  well-known  successor  to  the  famous 
Madame  de  Lieven.  But  whether  Madame  Novikoff  was 
out  of  sorts  when  I  chatted  with  her,  or  she  did  not  think  it 
worth  her  while  to  display  her  brilliancy  to  me,  I  am  bound 
to  say  I  found  her  rather  dull. 

It  was,  as  I  say,  however,  a  remarkable  collection  of 
people  who  used  to  meet  at  Lady  St.  Helier's.  Robert 
Browning  and  Lecky,  Fitzjames  Stephen  and  Maine,  Whis- 
tler and  Lowell,  Greenwood  and  Henley,  Oscar  Wilde  and 
Justin  M'Carthy,  Joseph  Chamberlain,  Randolph  Churchill, 
Lord  Iddesleigh  and  Sir  William  Harcourt,  Lady  Dorothy 
Nevill,  Mrs.  Proctor  and  Lady  Bancroft  were  habitual 
visitors  at  37  Wimpole  Street. 

It  is  a  little  strange  now  to  recall  that  Oscar  Wilde  first 
made  his  appearance  in  London  as  a  cultured  and  rather 
supercilious  exponent  of  eccentricity  in  dress  and  demeanour, 
and  was  regarded  by  those  who  did  not  know  him,  as  well 
by  those  whom  he  did  not  know,  as  little  better  than  a 


A  SALON  AND  ITS  SURROUNDINGS  349 

confirmed  self-advertiser  and  self-idolator,  with  a  tendency 
towards  buffoonery.  But  anyone  who  probed  a  little 
deeper  soon  discovered  that  he  had  to  do  with  an  uncom- 
monly clever  man,  who  adopted  these  queer  manners  and 
sun-flower  disguises,  merely  in  order  to  attract  attention 
and  to  gain  a  hearing  for  himself;  just  as  a  really  capable 
and  original  young  painter  will  be  guilty  of  exhibiting  some 
startling  piece,  of  whose  drawbacks  he  is  quite  conscious, 
solely  for  the  purpose  of  getting  an  opportunity  later  of 
displaying  his  real  talent. 

That  was  the  judgment  I  formed  of  Oscar  Wilde  very 
early  in  our  acquaintance,  and  his  brilliant  performances 
in  literature  and  on  the  stage  were  no  surprise  to  me.  I 
never  knew  him  well,  however,  though  I  was  often  in  his 
company  and  conversed  with  him.  But  I  never  saw  any 
one  so  completely  destroyed  by  success.  All  the  bad  features 
of  his  character  seemed  to  develop  at  once  and  to  show  in 
his  face.  With  more  wit  and  a  much  deeper  view  of  life 
than  his  follower,  Bernard  Shaw,  his  inclination  to  self- 
indulgence  and  vice  was  not  kept  under  control  by  his 
intelligence,  and  I  think  the  saddest  thing  I  have  known  in 
the  literary  world  was  the  rapid  downfall  of  the  author 
of  The  Soul  of  Man  Under  Socialism,  and  De  Profundis. 
I  think  on  the  whole  the  most  spontaneously  witty  thing 
ever  uttered  in  English  was  what  Wilde  is  reported  to  have 
said  to  that  ingenious  poetaster  Sir  Lewis  Morris,  the  author 
of  The  Epic  of  Hades,  when  the  latter  was  complaining 
bitterly  to  him  of  the  conspiracy  of  silence  maintained 
against  his  claims  to  the  poet  laureateship.  "It  is  a  com- 
plete conspiracy  of  silence  against  me,  a  conspiracy  of 
silence.  What  ought  I  to  do,  Oscar?"  "Join  it,"  replied 
Wilde.  Strange  evidence  of  our  national  incapacity  to  dis- 
associate intellectual  work  from  moral  character :  when  one  of 
Wilde's  plays  was  to  be  represented  after  his  deplorable  down- 
fall strong  protest  was  raised  on  grounds  of  public  morality  ! 


350  THE  RECORD   OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

The  first  time  I  met  Mr.  Joseph  Chamberlain  was  at 
Lady  St.  Helier's.  He  was  then  the  Joseph  Chamberlain 
of  "ransom,"  and  was,  of  course,  particularly  strong  on  the 
land  question,  and  Irish  land  being  the  problem  of  the  hour, 
on  "fair  rents."  As  luck  would  have  it  the  land  confiscator 
and  the  Socialist  sat  together  in  the  drawing-room,  and  this 
interminable  land  discussion  came  up.  Mr.  Chamberlain 
was  always  given  to  laying  down  the  law  on  any  subject 
which  he  had  taken  up,  and  fair  rents  was  the  matter  which 
he  then  knew  all  there  was  to  know  about  and  a  little  more. 
There  were  some  large  landowners  present  and  a  sharp 
discussion  went  on. 

Mr.  Chamberlain  pushed  his  fair-rent  theory  as  far  as 
he  could.  I  could  stand  it  no  longer  and  plunged  in  by 
saying  that  all  depended  upon  what  was  meant  by  the 
word  "fair."  Under  a  competitive  system  of  land  tenure 
there  was  no  more  certain  way  of  establishing  fair  rents 
than  there  was  of  determining  what  constituted  fair  wages. 
What  was  fair  in  one  case  might  not  be  fair  in  another,  and 
the  whole  problem  worked  down  to  what  was  a  fair  standard 
of  life,  or  even  as  to  whether  the  actual  producers  and  dis- 
tributors need  consider  anybody  but  themselves.  Mr. 
Chamberlain  would  not  accept  my  view  at  all  and  even 
got  a  little  angry  because  I  would  not  be  convinced  as  to 
the  correctness  of  his  theories.  Other  conversation  ceased, 
as  sometimes  will  happen,  and  all  around  us,  men  and 
women  were  listening  to  this  discussion,  so  unusual  in  a 
fashionable  drawing-room.  I  put  the  historical  part  of  the 
story  in  as  light  a  fashion  as  I  could ;  but,  light  as  it  might 
be,  it  was  too  heavy  for  Mr.  Chamberlain  who,  obviously, 
had  never  studied  these  questions  at  all.  This  was  apparent 
to  everybody,  and  Mr.  Chamberlain,  his  pistol  having 
missed  fire,  tried  to  knock  me  down  with  the  butt-end. 
Well  —  it  was  all  very  amusing  to  the  bystanders,  who, 
naturally  enough,  were  not  displeased  to  see  the  anti- 


A  SALON  AND  ITS  SURROUNDINGS  351 

landlord  and  the  more  logical  Socialist  at  variance.  The 
moral  of  the  argument  was  summed  up  later  by  a  wealthy 
and  prominent  politician  of  many  broad  acres  who  was 
present.  It  was  put  to  him  by  the  lady  of  the  house  that, 
if  Mr.  Chamberlain's  " ransom"  views  succeeded,  he  should 
join  the  Conservatives.  "No,"  was  his  answer,  " about  that 
time  I  shall  be  wanting  a  little  revenge,  and  I  shall  join  Mr. 
Hyndman  !"  This  was  long  ago;  but  for  years  afterwards 
when  I  chanced  to  meet  any  of  those  who  were  in  at  this 
little  encounter  they  would  say,  "Do  you  remember  when 
Mr.  Chamberlain  and  you,"  etc.,  etc. 

But  Mr.  Chamberlain  was  generally  unfortunate  in  these 
excursions  of  his  into  the  domain  of  agrarian  economics. 
The  following  incident  occurred  to  a  very  old  friend  of 
mine,  at  one  time  a  leading  Colonial  politician,  who  has 
frequently  represented  his  Colony  on  important  occasions. 
A  dinner  was  given  in  my  friend's  honour  at  Birmingham, 
with  the  Mayor  of  Birmingham  in  the  Chair,  Mr.  Chamber- 
lain, then  Colonial  Minister,  sitting  on  his  left  hand  and  my 
friend  as  guest  of  the  evening  on  his  right.  Again  the  land. 
Said  Mr.  Chamberlain  sententiously :  —  "The  very  best  Act 
I  know  dealing  with  the  land  question  is  one  passed  in  the 
Colony  of  Victoria  which,"  and  he  proceeded  to  deal  at 
some  length  with  the  provisions  of  the  Act  which  he  so 
strongly  approved,  and  in  particular  with  one  section  and 
clause  that  in  his  judgment  were  of  supreme  importance. 
My  friend  mildly  suggested  that  neither  the  Act  as  a  whole, 
nor  the  clause  as  a  part  of  it  bore  out  the  interpretation 
Mr.  Chamberlain  put  upon  them.  Mr.  Chamberlain  would 
not  hear  of  any  possibility  of  modification. 

My  friend  courteously  but  firmly  upheld  his  opinion. 
Mr.  Chamberlain  then  said  it  was  out  of  the  question  that, 
holding  the  position  he  did,  and  with  the  very  best  infor- 
mation at  his  disposal,  he  could  be  mistaken,  in  fact,  his 
decision  on  the  point  must  be  accepted  as  final.  After  a 


352  THE  RECORD   OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

little  more  fencing  my  friend  was  forced  to  this:  —  "I  am 
very  sorry/7  addressing  the  Mayor  by  name  —  it  was  Sir 
Something  Elkington,  I  believe  —  "I  am  very  sorry  to  be 
obliged  to  say  what  I  am  about  to  say,  and  I  tried  to  avoid 
doing  so,  but  I  think  you  will  admit  yourself  that  I  have 
been  driven  to  it  by  Mr.  Chamberlain's  own  statements. 
The  Act  upon  which  Mr.  Chamberlain  has  been  commenting 
was  drafted  by  me,  and  as  I  piloted  it  through  the  Victorian 
Assembly  it  is  generally  known  as  my  Act.  Not  only  do 
not  the  provisions  of  it  bear  out  Mr.  Chamberlain's  views, 
but  as  a  matter  of  fact  the  Courts  of  Law  have  decided  in 
the  sense  in  which  the  Act  was  originally  drawn  and  which 
I  have  put  here  just  now." 

Another  anecdote  told  me  by  Frederick  Greenwood  him- 
self shows  the  same  strange  disposition  on  the  part  of  Mr. 
Chamberlain  to  see  only  what  he  wished  to  see  on  a  much 
more  serious  issue.  Mr.  Chamberlain,  Sir  William  Har- 
court,  Mr.  Morley  and  Mr.  Greenwood  were  dining  in  the 
Strangers'  Room  of  the  Reform  Club  in  May  1899,  when 
matters  in  South  Africa  were  approaching  a  serious  crisis. 
The  question  of  war  or  peace  hung  in  the  balance.  Mr. 
Chamberlain  could,  and  eventually  did,  decide  which  it 
should  be.  "If,"  said  he,  "I  could  be  sure  of  public  opinion 
behind  me,  I  would  have  war  in  a  fortnight."  The  others 
present  expressed  their  disapproval  of  such  a  view  of  the 
matter,  and  regarded  a  war  in  South  Africa  against  the 
Boers  as  a  very  dangerous  and  doubtful  enterprise  indeed. 
"Not  at  all,"  was  the  answer  of  the  Secretary  of  State  for 
the  Colonies,  "the  whole  thing  would  be  a  matter  of  three 
months,  and  would  cost  about  £12,000,000."  At  that  mo- 
ment Mr.  Chamberlain  was  posing  in  public  as  a  seeker 
after  peace,  and  the  reports  of  General  Sir  William  Butler 
and  of  the  military  officials  of  the  Intelligence  Department 
specially  appointed  to  investigate  were  before  him.  Green- 
wood told  me  this  story  precisely  as  I  recount  it. 


A  SALON  AND  ITS  SURROUNDINGS  353 

At  one  time  I  believed  Mr.  Chamberlain  really  did  mean 
to  go  in  seriously  for  social  reconstruction,  in  spite  of  his 
strange  economic  mistakes  about  the  land,  and  possibly  my 
impression  to  that  effect  was  confirmed  by  the  fact  that 
when  I  went  down  to  Cambridge  to  open  a  Debate  at  the 
Union  on  Socialism  and  proposed  an  out-and-out  Socialist 
resolution,  his  son,  Mr.  Austen  Chamberlain,  then  an  under- 
graduate at  my  old  college,  went  with  me  into  the  lobby 
on  the  Socialist  side.  If  he  had  done  this  instead  of  devot- 
ing himself  to  an  aggressive  and  disastrous  Imperialism  in 
Africa  and  to  Tariff  Reform  at  home  he  would  have  served 
his  country  much  better  and  would  have  gained  a  far  higher 
reputation  for  himself. 

A  long  conversation  I  had  with  Lady  Dorothy  Nevill  at 
the  period  I  refer  to  made  a  great  impression  upon  me,  and 
I  think  it  gives  a  very  true  and  telling  statement  of  the 
attitude  of  "the  cleverest  aristocratic  class  in  the  world'7 
towards  social  and  political  developments  in  this  country. 
"You  are  making  a  very  great  mistake,  Mr.  Hyndman," 
this  lady  was  good  enough  to  say,  "in  devoting  yourself  to 
Socialism.  We  believe  you  to  be  honest  in  what  you 
are  doing,  because  we  have  offered  you  all  a  man  can  hope 
to  get  in  this  country,  and  you  have  not  chosen  to  take  it. 
But  you  will  never  succeed,  at  any  rate  in  your  own  life- 
time. We  have  had  an  excellent  innings,  I  don't  deny 
that  for  a  moment:  an  excellent  innings,  and  the  turn  of 
the  people  will  come  some  day.  I  see  that  quite  as  clearly 
as  you  do.  But  not  yet,  not  yet.  You  will  educate  some 
of  the  working  class,  that  is  all  you  can  hope  to  do  for  them. 
And  when  you  have  educated  them  we  shall  buy  them,  or, 
if  we  don't,  the  Liberals  will,  and  that  will  be  just  the  same 
for  you. 

"Besides,  we  shall  never  offer  any  obstinate  or  bitter 
resistance  to  what  is  asked  for.  When  your  agitation 
becomes  really  serious  we  shall  give  way  a  little,  and  grant 

2A 


354  THE  RECORD   OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

something  of  no  great  importance,  but  sufficient  to  satisfy 
the  majority  for  the  time  being.  Our  object  is  to  avoid 
any  direct  conflict  in  order  to  gain  time.  This  concession 
will  gain,  let  us  say,  ten  years:  it  won't  be  less.  Then  at 
the  expiration  of  that  period  you  will  have  worked  up 
probably  another  threatening  demonstration  on  the  part 
of  the  masses  against  what  you  call  the  class  monopoly  of 
the  means  and  instruments  of  production.  We  shall  meet 
you  in  quite  an  equitable  and  friendly  spirit  and  again 
surrender  a  point  from  which  we  all  along  meant  to  retire, 
but  which  we  have  defended  with  so  much  vigour  that  our 
resistance  has  seemed  to  be  quite  genuine,  and  our  sur- 
render has  for  your  friends  all  the  appearance  of  triumph. 
Yet  another  ten  years  are  thus  put  behind  us,  and  once 
more  you  start  afresh  with,  whatever  you  may  expect  to-day, 
a  somewhat  disheartened  and  disintegrated  array.  Once 
more  we  meet  you  with  the  same  tactics  of  partial  surren- 
der and  pleasing  procrastination.  But  now,  remember, 
thirty  years  have  passed  and  you  have  another  generation 
to  deal  with,  to  stir  up,  and  educate,  whilst,  if  I  may  ven- 
ture to  say  so,  you  yourself  will  not  be  so  young  nor  per- 
haps quite  so  hopeful  as  you  are  to-day.  Not  yet,  Mr. 
Hyndman,  your  great  changes  will  not  come  yet,  and  in 
the  meanwhile  you  will  be  engaged  on  a  very  thankless 
task  indeed.  Far  better  throw  in  your  lot  with  men  whom 
you  know  and  like,  and  do  your  best  to  serve  the  people 
whom  you  wish  to  benefit  from  the  top  instead  of  from  the 
bottom." 

I  have  always  thought  this  one  of  the  keenest  and  cleverest 
summaries  of  the  course  of  events  in  this  strange  conserva- 
tive country  ever  uttered,  and  I  consider  it  shows,  as  clearly 
as  can  be  shown,  how  the  aristocracy  here  has  contrived  to 
maintain  its  position  and  authority  when  aristocracies  in 
other  countries  have  so  largely  failed.  Lady  Dorothy 
herself  can  scarcely  have  imagined  she  was  so  accurately 


A  SALON  AND  ITS  SURROUNDINGS  355 

forecasting  the  course  of  events.  A  quarter  of  a  century 
has  passed  since  this  utterance,  and  it  seems  to  me  the 
aristocracy,  to  say  nothing  of  the  capitalists,  have  given 
way  considerably  less  than  Lady  Dorothy  herself  believed 
they  were  prepared  to  surrender. 

How  much  manner  and  deliberately  cultivated  courtesy 
has  to  do  with  personal  success  in  the  world.  There  was 
Sir  Richard  Burton,  for  instance,  by  far  the  greatest  traveller 
and  geographical  and  ethnological  student  of  his  time.  I 
never  met  him  but  that  I  was  astonished  at  the  depth  and 
range  of  his  knowledge.  Moreover  his  pre-eminence  in  his 
own  line  was  universally  admitted.  Yet  what  success  he 
achieved  was  all  against  the  collar,  and  he  never  attained 
to  anything  like  the  position  to  which  his  abilities  and 
performances  entitled  him,  while  far  inferior  men  walked 
into  berths  ahead  of  him.  His  comparative  failure  from  the 
worldly  point  of  view  was  due,  so  it  is  said,  to  the  fact  that 
he  was  apt  to  treat  mediocrities,  even  if  occupying  high 
posts,  with  little  consideration  for  their  feelings,  and  that 
his  criticism  of  the  mistakes  of  his  nominal  superiors  was 
apt  to  be  more  caustic  and  telling  than  delicate.  It  is  cer- 
tain in  any  case  that  Sir  Richard  never  held  the  official 
position  to  which  his  abilities  and  remarkable  achievements 
entitled  him.  When  I  met  him  he  was  a  disappointed  man 
who  had  seen  persons  who  were  inferior  to  himself  in  every 
respect  put  over  his  head,  and  who  was  besides  in  no  en- 
viable case  pecuniarily. 

He  showed,  however,  nothing  of  this  in  his  manner  or 
conversation  on  ordinary  occasions.  He  was  the  broadest 
and  deepest  man  of  his  height  I  ever  encountered,  though 
I  had  seen  some  magnificent  specimens  of  his  build  out 
West.  Sitting  at  the  dining  table  he  almost  required  two 
places,  and  I  noticed  on  one  occasion  that  he  had  a  most 
singular  habit  of  looking  quickly  every  few  minutes,  first 
over  one  shoulder,  and  then  over  the  other,  as  if  he  expected 


356  THE  RECORD   OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

to  be  attacked  from  behind.  Meeting  him  one  evening  at 
the  house  of  the  great  Arabian  scholar,  Dr.  Badger,  he 
talked  very  freely  indeed.  We  were  seated  after  dinner  in 
a  large  room  in  the  basement,  Burton  and  Badger  smoking 
long  Turkish  pipes,  the  tobacco  in  which,  after  having  been 
lighted  by  a  glowing  charcoal  disc  from  the  fire,  passed 
through  the  hubble-bubble  and  a  long  stem  to  the  mouth. 
I  could  never  handle  this  contrivance  artistically  and  con- 
fined my  smoking  to  the  less  complicated  cigar.  But  they 
both  seemed  to  enjoy  the  narghileh  hugely,  and  Burton 
became  very  frank  and  communicative.  Referring  to  his 
travels  in  Africa  I  asked  him  about  H.  M.  Stanley,  when 
he  said:  "The  impression  of  my  old  Arab  merchants  on 
the  coast  and  their  men  is  that  Stanley  never  went  to  some 
of  the  places  he  said  he  visited  at  all,  and  if  half  I  have 
heard  about  him  is  true,  I  should  have  been  very  sorry  to 
be  one  of  his  party.  I  might  not  have  been  sitting  safely 
here  now.  But  there  are  a  good  many  tales  told  about 
travellers  over  and  above  the  travellers'  tales  they  tell 
themselves.  I  have  suffered  from  some  of  them  myself," 
and  he  laughed  a  great  laugh.  Then  he  and  Badger  took 
to  talking  Arabic  at  the  top  of  their  voices,  till  I  thought 
the  house  would  come  down  upon  us  all.  A  tremendous 
man  possessed  of  encyclopaedic  information,  that  was  the 
impression  the  famous  Richard  Burton  produced  upon  me. 

I  began  this  reference  to  Burton,  however,  solely  by 
way  of  illustration  of  the  failure  of  a  brilliant  man  of  a  very 
different  career  to  attain  to  the  summit  of  his  ambition  to 
which  he  was  fully  entitled.  This  was  due  to  a  faculty  he 
had  in  common  with  Burton,  that  of  unnecessarily  making 
enemies  of  people  who  might  be  useful  to  him,  or  who 
might  at  least  interfere  with  his  projects.  I  am  bound  to 
say  I  admired  Sir  William  Harcourt.  The  imprudent  way 
he  played  his  political  game,  and  the  imprudent  things  he 
said  and  did,  would  have  hopelessly  wrecked  a  man  of  less 


A  SALON  AND   ITS  SURROUNDINGS  357 

ability.  He  resolutely  posed  as  a  political  swash-buckler, 
though  I  could  never  see  that  he  had  nearly  so  much  of 
the  Dugald  Dalgetty  character  as  some  of  his  colleagues, 
who  ever  lived  in  the  odour  of  political  sanctity.  I  regret 
to  say  I  once  got  into  a  very  awkward  mess  with  him, 
which  was  the  more  annoying  to  me  that  I  have  through- 
out my  life  been  exceedingly  careful  never  under  any  cir- 
cumstances to  print  any  rash  things  which  are  said  in 
private  conversation.  This  of  course.  To  do  otherwise  is 
to  break  every  rule  of  the  game.  However,  as  the  story 
was  made  public  at  the  time,  there  is  no  harm  in  repeating 
it  now. 

I  was  talking  to  Sir  William  Harcourt,  and  said  that  in 
my  opinion  there  was  at  the  time  a  good  deal  of  stir  among 
the  people,  which,  if  any  opportunity  arose,  might  give  rise 
to  serious  trouble.  "Well,"  said  Sir  William,  "it  may  be 
so,  but  for  my  part  I  don't  believe  in  any  great  popular 
discontent  until  I  hear  of  ricks  on  fire  and  factories  in 
flames."  This  was  said  in  quite  an  off-hand  way,  and 
naturally  meant  nothing.  Unfortunately  for  me  I  repeated 
the  remark  to  a  friend  and  member  of  our  party,  who  ap- 
parently was  less  scrupulous  about  such  matters  than  I 
am,  and  the  next  thing  in  connection  with  it  was  I  saw  the 
phrase  published  in  a  letter  to  the  Times.  It  was  out- 
rageous, and  I  felt  much  annoyed  at  it  at  the  time.  Nowa- 
days it  does  not  matter,  and  that  Sir  William  did  take  the 
view  he  expressed  there  is  no  doubt. 

What  an  interesting  interview  that  must  have  been 
which  took  place,  just  before  Lord  Randolph  Churchill 
came  to  the  front  in  the  Tory  Party,  when  Sir  William 
Harcourt  went  down  to  stay  the  week-end  at  Hughenden. 
What  a  splendid  subject  for  an  imaginary  conversation. 
Ill-natured  people  said  he  went  for  the  purpose  of  negotiat- 
ing a  change  of  sides  in  the  House  of  Commons,  which  I 
don't  believe  a  bit.  But  the  visit  gave  rise  to  at  any  rate 


358  THE  RECORD   OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

one  good  story  which  likewise  I  consider  to  be  wholly 
apocryphal.  Sir  William  Harcourt  formed  a  very  high 
opinion  of  Lord  Beaconsfield  when  on  this  visit,  and  always 
spoke  of  him  very  well  afterwards.  On  the  other  hand, 
there  were  those  who  declared  that  the  Tory  leader  did 
not  reciprocate  these  feelings  of  admiration,  but  on  being 
asked  what  he  thought  of  his  guest  said,  "He  ought  to  go 
very  far,  very  far  indeed,  for  he  has  no  scruples  whatsoever 
to  restrain  him."  However  that  may  be,  Sir  William 
ought  to  have  gone  so  far  indeed  as  to  be  Prime  Minister, 
and  it  was  a  great  misfortune  for  his  party  that  he  didn't. 

But  here  is  where  the  similarity  of  character  to  Sir  Richard 
Burton  came  in.  He  made  no  attempt  to  ingratiate  him- 
self with  the  heavy  money-bags  of  the  party,  some  of  whom 
thought  themselves  of  very  great  importance.  Here  his 
innate  aristocratic  arrogance  did  him  a  mischief.  He 
damned  them  all  and  sundry,  with  an  impartiality  worthy 
of  the  highest  praise.  Mr.  Henry  Labouchere  told  me 
that  an  influential  and  wealthy  Liberal  called  him  aside 
one  day  in  the  House  and  asked  him  what  could  be  the 
matter  with  Harcourt.  "Do  you  know,  he  actually  damned 
my  eyes  just  now?"  "Did  he  really?"  said  Labouchere 
sympathetically;  "and  are  they  any  the  worse  for  it?" 
On  another  occasion,  not  being  properly  supported  as  he 
thought  when  he  was  speaking  from  the  front  bench,  he 
turned  round  and  said  to  those  behind  him,  "damn  you, 
you  fellows,  why  don't  you  cheer?"  These  anathemas,  it 
appears,  told  against  him  at  the  critical  moment  when  the 
succession  to  the  Premiership  hung  in  the  balance,  and  the 
objurgated  plutocrats  rallied  to  Lord  Rosebery's  side  to  a 
man.  Nevertheless,  Sir  William  Harcourt,  with  all  his 
rashness,  would  have  done  much  better  as  Prime  Minister 
than  the  Scotch  Whig  Peer,  as  he  was  one  of  the  very  small 
band  of  lawyers  who  have  ever  been  of  real  service  as  poli- 
ticians in  the  House  of  Commons. 


A  SALON  AND  ITS  SURROUNDINGS  359 

During  the  period  these  random  observations  deal  with 
I  was  constantly  in  receipt  of  information  which  was  not 
commonly  accessible,  and  was  able  to  astonish  those  who 
ought  to  have  been  better,  or  at  least  thought  they  ought 
to  have  been  better,  posted  than  myself.  But  that  was 
not  so  strange  as  may  appear  now,  regard  being  had  to  the 
opportunities  put  at  my  disposal  from  more  than  one 
quarter.  What,  however,  did  surprise  me  was  that  our 
Foreign  Office,  notwithstanding  the  shock  of  1870,  was  in 
no  closer  touch  with  the  actual  course  of  events  than  it 
was  at  that  sinister  date ;  and  I  have  my  reasons  for  think- 
ing matters  are  not  very  much  better  now. 

To  this  day  I  have  never  been  able  to  obtain  any  ex- 
planation of  the  incident  I  now  relate.  At  the  date  I  speak 
of,  M.  Leon  Gambetta  had  constituted  a  Ministry  of  which 
he  was  the  head.  It  was  a  great  triumph  for  Republicanism 
and  anti-Clericalism,  and  Gambetta  made  no  secret  of  the 
fact  that  he  wished  to  be  on  good  terms  with  Great  Britain  ; 
indeed  there  seemed  every  prospect  of  an  entente  cordiale 
being  established  similar  to  that  which  has  been  happily 
arranged  to-day.  There  was  a  general  good  feeling  between 
the  two  countries,  and  arrangements  were  come  to  which 
practically  rendered  certain  a  continuous  agreement  in 
relation  to  Egypt,  the  most  prickly  question,  with  the  ex- 
ception perhaps  of  the  Newfoundland  Fisheries,  then  open 
between  the  two  Governments.  All  this  was  very  satis- 
factory, so  far  as  it  went,  even  though  the  European  domi- 
nation of  Egypt  was  not  a  good  feature  of  the  understand- 
ing; and  Sir  Charles  Dilke,  who  was  virtually  our  Secretary 
of  State  for  Foreign  Affairs,  deserved  and  received  great 
credit  for  the  good  relations  he  was  instrumental  in  bring- 
ing about  and  strengthening. 

It  so  chanced  that  one  evening  I  met  a  very  close  friend 
of  Sir  Charles  Dilke,  and  he  expressed  to  me  the  satisfaction 
which  was  universally  felt,  and  which  he  was  sure  I  shared, 


360          THE  RECORD,  OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

at  the  great  improvement  in  the  public  feeling  on  both 
sides  of  the  Channel.  He  also  remarked  upon  the  immense 
advantage  it  was  that  we  should  have  a  genuine  Republi- 
can of  the  highest  ability  and  patriotism,  a  vigorous  man 
and  a  great  orator  in  the  prime  of  life,  as  probably  the 
virtual  chief  of  the  French  Republic  for  many  years.  ' ' But/' 
I  said,  "I  am  afraid  you  are  quite  mistaken,  and  that  M. 
Gambetta's  position  is  by  no  means  so  secure  as  you  sup- 
pose. In  fact,  it  is  not  too  much  to  state  that  at  this  very 
moment  he  has  made  up  his  mind  that  he  cannot  continue 
to  hold  office,  and  will  be  out  of  power  within  a  very  few 
weeks."  "Oh,"  replied  my  interlocutor,  "you  always  have 
some  strange  and  impossible  news,  Mr.  Hyndman.  I  am 
satisfied,  on  what  is  the  best  authority  in  this  country, 
that  you  are  completely  mistaken,  and  that  never  was  the 
situation  in  France  more  secure,  or  was  it  more  certain  that 
the  arrangements  made  between  the  two  countries  will  be 
carried  out." 

I  was  a  little  nettled,  I  confess,  and  replied  that  my 
information  might  at  times  seem  strange,  but  that  in  nearly 
every  case  it  had  proved  to  be  correct,  and  that  this  most 
certainly  would  prove  to  be  no  exception  to  the  rule.  I 
then  went  on  to  explain  M.  Gambetta's  position  and  tactics : 
"Whether  M.  Gambetta  has  been  to  Germany,  as  some 
say  he  has,  to  see  Prince  Bismarck  or  not,  and  this  I  do 
not  pretend  to  be  able  to  determine,  it  is  quite  certain  he 
finds  the  whole  international  situation  so  complicated  and 
so  dangerous  that  he  feels  that  he,  of  all  men,  is  perhaps 
the  least  capable  of  handling  it  to  the  advantage  of  his 
country,  unless  he  has  the  powers  of  a  Parliamentary  dicta- 
torship virtually  accorded  to  him.  It  is  indispensable  for 
him  to  win  the  victory,  therefore,  in  this  struggle  between 
scrutin  de  liste  and  scrutin  d' arrondissement,  which  you 
thoroughly  understand.  If  Gambetta  were  to  obtain 
scrutin  de  liste,  he  could  certainly  have  the  political  power 


A  SALON  AND  ITS  SURROUNDINGS  361 

and  prestige  which  he  holds  to  be  essential,  and  then  he 
would  do  his  utmost  to  develop  the  policy  which  he  has 
sketched  out  and  is  ready  to  fill  in.  But  he  knows  per- 
fectly well  that  scrutin  d' arrondissement  will  be  carried 
against  him,  so  he  is  riding  for  a  fall  which  he  is  quite  cer- 
tain to  get.  This  is  exactly  the  situation." 

"You  must  excuse  me/'  was  the  polite  reply,  "if  I  can- 
not, knowing  what  I  know  here,  quite  accept  your  ex- 
position, and  I  need  scarcely  say  I  hope  it  is  not  a  correct 
statement.  I  have  no  doubt  you  feel  the  same  about  that." 
Three  weeks  later  I  met  the  same  gentleman  again  at  Lady 
St.  Helier's.  He  looked  at  me  as  if  I  were  somebody  un- 
canny, and  tried,  I  thought,  to  keep  out  of  my  way,  a 
manoeuvre  in  which  I  did  not  let  him  succeed.  The  reason 
for  this  avoidance  was  that  M.  Gambetta  had  just  resigned, 
and  there  had  appeared  in  M.  Gambetta's  own  paper  pre- 
cisely the  explanation  of  the  causes  of  his  retirement,  which 
I  had  given  to  my  eminent  acquaintance  at  our  previous 
interview.  He  admitted,  when  I  got  hold  of  him,  that  I 
had  been  only  too  accurate  in  my  forecast,  and  added  that 
his  friends,  meaning  Sir  Charles  Dilke  and  others,  were  as 
much  mistaken  as  himself,  hinting,  indeed,  that  Gambetta 
had  not  used  them  well. 

Now  comes  the  moral  in  this  particular  case.  I  had  no 
special  or  secret  information  whatever.  I  knew  nothing 
that  any  Englishman  who  had  made  any  name  for  himself 
on  the  Continent  at  all,  could  not  have  learned  just  as 
easily  as  I  did  myself.  Certainly,  I  was  very  anxious  to 
know  how  matters  stood  with  the  French  Ministry ;  whether 
M.  Gambetta  felt  he  could  face  and  overcome  the  bitter 
opposition  to  which  he  was  subjected,  and  whether,  above 
all,  the  friendly  arrangements  between  England  and  France 
would  be  carried  out,  especially  in  relation  to  Egypt.  Prob- 
ably I  might  even  have  obtained  what  I  wanted  from 
M.  Gambetta  himself.  But  as  I  was  strolling  along  the 


362  THE  RECORD   OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

Boulevard  I  met  a  very  old  French  political  friend  who  was 
generally  well  up  in  what  was  going  on.  "Far  better  than 
my  telling  you  anything  about  it,  if  you  have  the  time  to 
spare,"  he  said  in  answer  to  my  question,  "we  will  look 
in  and  see  M.  Sptiller.  I  am  going  that  way  and  we  will 
call  at  the  Republique  FranQaise,  then  we  shall  get  the  news 
direct  from  headquarters."  M.  Spiiller  was  the  editor  of 
the  Republique  Frangaise  and  Gambetta's  most  intimate 
confidant.  To  make  a  long  story  short,  M.  Sptiller  received 
us  at  once,  when  my  friend  sent  up  his  name,  and  gave  us 
quite  frankly  the  explanation  of  M.  Gambetta's  policy 
which  I  repeated  later.  Consequently,  I  feel  the  British 
Government  ought  not  to  have  been  taken  by  surprise 
when  M.  Gambetta  went  out  of  office.  But  they  were, 
and  afterwards  we  drifted  into  a  war  against  a  people 
"rightly  struggling  to  be  free." 

Among  others  whom  I  met  at  this  time  were  W.  E.  H. 
Lecky  and  W.  E.  Henley.  It  is  impossible  to  imagine  a 
greater  contrast  between  two  men.  Lecky,  tall,  thin  and 
gaunt,  with  shoulders  that  seemed  scarcely  broader  than 
his  tapering  head  and  looking  as  if  his  clothes  were  always 
just  about  to  slip  off  him,  cool,  well-read  and  philosophical 
except  on  one  subject  —  Home  Rule  —  he  was  quite  the 
typical  man  of  the  study  who  had  just  stepped  out  of  it 
to  blink  at  society  and  the  world.  Interesting  in  his  works, 
less  attractive  in  his  conversation.  On  the  other  hand, 
Henley,  broken  and  battered,  able  only  to  hobble  along 
with  difficulty,  with  his  powerful  eager  face,  talking  even 
of  subjects  he  knew  well  with  a  vigour  and  a  combativeness 
as  if  he  nad  made  a  first-hand  acquaintance  with  them  but 
yesterday.  Admiring  and  praising  physical  power  and  fit- 
ness of  body  for  their  own  sake,  as  I  have  observed  even 
men  of  strong  minds  do  who  are  themselves  enfeebled  at 
birth  or  by  accident,  probably  there  was  no  editor  of  his 
day  who  had  such  a  galvanic  influence  upon  able  young 


A  SALON  AND  ITS   SURROUNDINGS  363 

writers  who  were  brought  in  contact  with  him.  I  have 
met  some  of  those  who  worked  for  him,  and  one  and  all 
they  talk  as  if  Henley,  though  a  most  arbitrary  chief,  first 
showed  them  what  they  were  capable  of  doing,  and  they 
speak  of  him  with  respect  and  affection  to  this  day.  Hud- 
yard  Kipling  himself  first  became  known  to  fame  as  a 
writer  of  vigorous  verse  by  his  contributions  to  the  Scottish, 
afterwards  the  National,  Observer.  Mr.  Henley  told  me 
how  Kipling's  "  Tommy  this  and  Tommy  that  and  Tommy 
mind  your  soul"  came  to  him  through  the  ordinary  post, 
and  said  half-sadly,  "but  I  shall  never  get  any  more  in  that 
way  now." 

But  Mr.  Henley  and  his  band  of  intellectual  physical- 
force  men  never  became  popular  with  the  general  public. 
They  told  their  side  of  the  truth  too  plainly,  not  to  say  too 
" brutally,"  and  in  too  literary  a  form  for  general  accept- 
ance. There  is  no  wide  public  in  this  island  for  great 
ability  in  letters  unless  it  is  spiced  up  with  smart  para- 
dox, or  is  watered  down  to  a  School  Board  strength.  But 
Mr.  Henley  did  good  service.  He  had  pluck,  initiative  and 
appreciation  and,  if  he  not  unfrequently  overplayed  his 
role,  the  qualities  which  he  exhibited  in  doing  so  were 
sufficiently  rare  and  admirable  in  these  days  to  win  for 
him  permanent  regard.  In  prose  and  in  verse  he  did  his 
best  to  be  as  strong  intellectually  as  he  would  have  liked 
to  be  physically,  and  if  there  is  here  and  there  a  sense  of 
strain  in  his  efforts,  that  is  no  more  than  to  say  that  he  did 
not  quite  attain  the  high  level  towards  which  he  strove. 
And  as  I  am  myself  a  stong  anti-Imperialist,  this  is  a  good 
deal  for  me  personally  to  say  about  such  a  vehement  op- 
ponent. 

It  may  seem  a  little  odd  to  those  who  have  only  known 
or  heard  of  me  for  more  than  a  quarter  of  a  century  as  a 
pestilent  agitator  and  sanguinary  revolutionist,  to  learn 
that  within  that  period  the  Ambassador  of  one  of  the  great 


364  THE  RECORD   OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

powers  to  St.  James's  should  have  thought  it  worth  his 
while  to  call  upon  me  to  endeavour  to  persuade  me  to  give 
up  my  Socialist  propaganda  and  accept  the  proposals 
made  to  me  to  take  an  active  part  in  the  political  work  of 
the  Conservative  Party.  But  so  it  was.  He  was  very 
persistent,  likewise,  in  his  efforts  to  induce  me  to  abandon 
what  he  considered  a  hopeless  cause,  and  "make  myself 
useful"  in  my  day  and  generation.  His  arguments  were 
those  with  which  I  had  become  by  that  time  familiar,  but 
they  were  urged  from  a  somewhat  different  and  unusual 
point  of  view  and  enforced  by  an  illustration  which,  for  me 
at  least,  had  the  merit  of  novelty. 

"We  have  met  several  times,  Mr.  Hyndman,  and  I  have 
come  to  see  you  thus  privately  and  informally  and  shall 
hope  to  come  again  in  order  to  beg  you  not  to  wreck  your 
career  and  waste  your  life  by  devoting  yourself  to  endeavours 
in  which  you  cannot  possibly  hope  to  succeed.  Great  op- 
portunities for  being  really  useful  lie  before  you,  and  it  will 
be  sheer  madness  on  your  part  if  you  throw  them  away  in 
favour  of  chasing  a  mere  will-o'-the-wisp.  I  am  a  much 
older  man  than  you  are  and  I  have  been  a  Socialist  myself. 
In  fact,  if  you  were  to  ask  me  what  I  think  to-day  I  should 
tell  you  I  am  quite  convinced  that  Socialism  is  naturally 
and  inevitably  the  next  stage  in  the  development  of  the 
human  race.  But  it  will  not  come  in  my  time  or  in  yours. 
Meanwhile  these  unrealisable  ideals  will  absorb  your  energies, 
dissipate  your  fortune  and  wear  out  your  life.  On  the 
other  hand,  if  you  are  reasonable,  cease  to  be  a  fanatic,  or 
even  an  enthusiast,  and  take  a  practical  view  of  things, 
you  will  be  able  to  serve  your  country  in  a  department  into 
which  party  politics  do  not  or  at  any  rate  ought  not  to 
enter,  where  your  very  indifference  to  party  will  be  ad- 
vantageous, and  where  you  will  be  able  to  help  on  the 
peaceful  development  even  of  Socialism  more  than  you  can 
ever  hope  to  do  as  a  private  individual." 


A  SALON  AND  ITS  SURROUNDINGS  365 

When  I  remarked  in  reply  to  his  argument  that  this  was 
all  very  well  and  that  I  felt  grateful  for  the  interest  he 
took  in  me,  but  that  having  put  my  hand  to  the  plough  I 
could  scarcely  in  justice  to  those  who  had  joined  me  in  the 
struggle  look  back;  that,  farther,  there  was  no  probability 
of  arresting  the  manifest  decay  which  was  setting  in  through- 
out the  population  of  this  island  unless  a  resolute  Socialist 
party  were  formed  and  kept  vigorously  at  work,  he  said 
sarcastically:  " That , is  mere  philanthropy,  the  vice  of  the 
sentimental  and  incapable.  You  do  not  really  believe  what 
you  are  saying.  The  basic  theories  of  Socialism  are  not  in 
themselves  philanthropic  except  in  so  far  as  they  sketch 
out  and  help  on  a  more  complete  development,  and  that  as 
I  have  said  is  yet  many  generations  ahead  of  us;  besides, 
pardon  me  for  saying  so,  the  realisation  of  that  happy,  and, 
if  you  like,  glorious  period  will  not  be  materially  hastened 
by  anything  you  can  do.  That  you  will  not  gain  any  grati- 
tude by  what  you  are  attempting  is  already  quite  certain. 
This  you  do  not  expect,  you  say.  Men  are  never  grateful 
and  the  advocacy  of  Socialism  is  sufficient  reward  in  itself. 
Beautiful !  But  you  do  not  get  any  farther  than  you  were 
before.  No,  no,  if  you  want  to  be  really  philanthropic  on 
those  lines,  don't  try  to  improve  the  race  of  men :  that  is  a 
mere  chimera  under  existing  conditions.  Improve  the 
breed  of  pigs,  Mr.  Hyndman,  improve  the  breed  of  pigs. 
If  you  resolutely  refuse  to  employ  your  abilities  in  the 
service  of  your  country  give  the  whole  thing  up,  turn  farmer 
and  improve  the  breed  of  pigs.  In  that  way  you  will  do 
far  more  good  for  your  fellow-men  than  by  exhausting 
yourself,  and  preparing  a  disappointed  old  age,  by  preach- 
ing Socialism."  I  saw  this  well-known  diplomatist  several 
times  afterwards,  but  he  at  last  was  driven  to  think  he  had 
to  deal  with  a  downright  lunatic,  because  I  did  not  follow 
his  advice.  Perhaps  he  was  right. 

Lord  Iddesleigh,  better  known  as  Sir  Stafford  Northcote, 


366  THE  RECORD   OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

followed  on  the  same  side.  He  knew  my  father  very  well 
at  Eton  and  his  eldest  son  had  been  at  a  private  tutor's 
and  at  Oxford  with  my  brother  Hugh,  so  with  him  also  I 
was  well  acquainted.  Meeting  Lord  Iddesleigh  frequently 
in  Wimpole  Street  I  got  to  know  him  too  very  well  myself, 
and  he  was  likewise  kind  enough  to  show  an  interest  in  my 
career.  Taking  my  wife  down  to  dinner  one  evening,  he 
impressed  upon  her  the  necessity  for  not  allowing  me  to 
throw  away  my  life  upon  the  barren  field  of  Socialist  agita- 
tion, telling  her  that  I  could  not  possibly  succeed  in  what 
I  had  undertaken,  whereas,  on  other  lines,  I  might  hope  to 
do,  so  he  was  pleased  to  say,  great  things.  But  I  had 
quite  resolved,  as  the  French  put  it,  to  accomplish  the 
impossible,  and  persisted  in  throwing  myself  into  the  full 
stream  of  revolutionary  agitation. 


CHAPTER  XXIV 

THE   WEST  END  RIOTS 

rwas  out  of  the  unemployed  meetings  and  agitations 
that  the  so-called  "West  End  Riots"  came.    They  made 
a  great  stir  in  their  day.    Now,  so  many  years  having  passed, 
they  are  frequently  mixed  up  with  the  meeting  on  "  Bloody 
Sunday"  in  Trafalgar  Square,  which  led  to  the  death  of  the 
unfortunate  man  Linnell,   and  the  imprisonment  of  Cun- 
ninghame  Graham  and  Burns.     The  circumstances  of  the 
case  were,  however,  quite  different.     There  had  grown  up 
at  the  East  End  of  London  during  1885  and  1886  a  more 
or  less  subsidised  agitation,  arising  out  of  the  collapse  of  the      ) 
sugar  refineries   and  the   consequent  throwing  of  a  large   / 
number  of  men  out  of  work,  which  led  to  an  organisation  I 
called  "The  Fair  Trade  League."     I  am  willing  to  admit   \ 
that  there  was  a  good  deal  to  be  said  for  their  contentions 
in  themselves,  but  brought  up  as  they  were  in  direct  oppo- 
sition to  Socialist  palliatives  and  Socialism  as  a  cure  for 
unemployment,    the    whole    movement    was   used    by   the 
capitalists  against  us. 

These  people,  headed  by  two  shrewd  persons  Peters  and 
Kelly,  called  a  meeting  in  Trafalgar  Square  in  favour  of 
Fair  Trade  in  the  autumn  of  1886.  The  Social-Democratic 
Federation  at  once  summoned  a  counter  demonstration 
against  it.  The  two  bodies  met,  many  of  the  Fair  Traders, 
as  is  now  well  known,  being  people  who  had  been  brought 
up  at  so  much  a  head,  ready  for  any  little  diversion.  There 
was  a  good  deal  of  friction  in  the  Square  itself  between  the 
two  factions,  and  the  whole  thing  seemed  likely  to  degenerate 

367 


368  THE  RECORD   OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

into  a  free  fight,  when  the  police  came  to  me  and  suggested 
that  our  folk  should  go  off  to  Hyde  Park,  and  thus  avoid  a 
serious  breach  of  the  peace.  As  the  meeting  was  not  our 
meeting,  and  we  had  made  our  protest  in  several  speeches, 
we  all  thought  there  was  no  objection  to  this  course.  So 
Burns  took  a  red  flag  to  lead  the  way,  and  we  called  upon 
the  people  to  follow.  Many  of  the  other  side  came  too,  and 
a  wholly  unorganised  mob  went  rushing  down  Pall  Mall 
and  up  St.  James's  Street,  where,  as  speedily  appeared, 
there  were  no  police  at  all. 

The  trouble  began  at  the  Reform  Club.  There,  owing  to 
a  member  wishing  to  get  into  either  that  Club  or  the  Carl- 
ton,  a  halt  occurred:  some  of  our  supporters  helping  him 
to  get  through  without  being  crushed  or  assaulted.  Cham- 
pion and  I  who  were  in  Pall  Mall  among  the  crowd,  on  the 
opposite  side  of  the  pavement,  saw  some  of  the  servants  of 
the  Reform  Club  throw  down  missiles  at  the  crowd  in  the 
shape  of  old  nail-brushes,  shoes,  etc.  Thereupon  stones 
were  thrown  at  the  windows,  and  a  great  hubbub  ensued. 
Happily  the  people  did  not  raid  the  Club,  but  hurried  along. 
As  we  passed  up  St.  James's  Street,  however,  we  noted  that 
much  heavier  stone-throwing  had  begun  —  the  roadway 
was  then  macadamised,  and  there  was  more  than  one  big 
heap  of  metal  ready  broken  for  laying  down  —  and  that 
many  o»f  the  Club  windows  were  smashed  all  to  pieces,  in- 
cluding the  windows  of  the  New  University  Club,  from  which 
I  had  not  long  before  been  expelled  for  making  a  speech  on 
the  Embankment  in  favour  of  the  unemployed.  It  was 
said  at  the  time  that  the  crowd  did  this  particular  window- 
breaking  job  there  so  thoroughly  in  revenge  for  my  expul- 
sion. But  this  was  a  preposterous  statement,  as  I  don't 
suppose  a  single  man  of  the  mob,  who  were  not  our  people 
anyhow,  knew  one  club  from  another. 

As  we  left  St.  James's  Street,  however,  and  went  along 
Piccadilly  things  got  worse  and  worse.  Nearly  all  the 


\ 


THE  WEST  END  RIOTS  369 

shops,  especially  the  tailors'  and  hosiers',  had  their  windows 
broken  and  were  looted.  It  was  a  funny  enough  scene  to 
observe  these  people  from  the  East  End  of  London,  brought 
up  from  their  poor  quarters  at  five  shillings  a  head  by  the 
funds  of  the  Fair  Trade  League,  freely  helping  themselves 
to  new  garments  and  then  putting  them  on  in  the  Green 
Park.  In  South  Audley  Street  matters  got  worse  still, 
and  some  of  us  saved  a  barouche-full  of  ladies  who  were 
being  roughly  threatened  by  some  of  the  fellows  from  what 
seemed  likely  to  be  a  very  ugly  encounter.  Later  we 
learnt  that  the  whole  of  South  Audley  Street  had  been 
pretty  thoroughly  looted,  and  that  several  ladies  in  car- 
riages and  on  foot  had  thought  themselves  lucky  to  get  off 
with  the  loss  of  their  jewellery  and  purses.  But  of  that 
we  saw  nothing,  as  we  made  our  way  to  the  Achilles  statue, 
where  we  held  our  renewed  meeting. 

Now  came  a  series  of  most  amusing  events.  The  scare 
throughout  London  which  followed  upon  this  unexpected 
and  disorganised  raid  was  more  cowardly  and  ridiculous 
than  anything  ever  known  in  my  day.  The  rich  classes  who 
up  to  that  moment  had  been  quite  indifferent  to  the  suffer- 
ings of  the  unemployed,  and  had  allowed  the  Mansion 
House  Relief  Fund  to  languish  on  at  £2000  or  £3000  were 
stirred  to  a  sudden  outburst  of  heartfelt  charity.  The 
Lord  Mayor  actually  received  £75,000  within  forty-eight 
hours  from  persons  whose  bowels  of  compassion  were 
moved  and  their  purse-strings  loosened  by  a  swift-born 
pity  quite  undistinguishable  from  craven  fear. 

Those  who  had  anything  to  lose  were  adjured  to  arm 
themselves  in  haste,  and  scions  of  the  illustrious  house  of 
Campbell,  whose  head  is  the  Duke  of  Argyll,  remarkable 
even  in  Scotland  for  their  inequitable  acquisition  of  the 
lands  of  others,  were  specially  anxious  that  the  methods 
of  conveyance  practised  by  themselves  and  their  ancestors 
beyond  the  Tweed  should  not  be  introduced  into  London. 

2B 


370  THE  RECORD   OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

One  member  of  the  family  assured  the  public  that  he  had 
laid  in  a  stock  of  Winchester  repeating  rifles  wherewith  to 
supplement  the  efforts  of  the  police,  and  experiment  on  the 
vile  bodies  of  the  expropriators  from  below.  Then  the 
newspapers  kept  up  the  panic  and  fanned  fear  into  terror. 
The  days  following  the  disturbance  were  exceedingly  foggy, 
and  all  sorts  of  rumours  were  abroad.  We,  nous  autres 
pauvres  apotres,  numbering  at  the  time  a  few  score  thorough- 
going Socialists  in  the  whole  of  the  metropolis  at  the  out- 
side, read  with  delighted  laughter  the  placards,  "  London  in 
Danger  from  Socialist  Plots,"  "  75,000  Socialists  marching 
on  the  West  End  from  Deptford,"  "  Arrangements  perfected 
to  protect  private  property,"  and  similar  idiotic  announce- 
ments. Some  of  these  "  arrangements "  were  exquisitely 
funny.  One  comrade  well  known  at  that  time  was  in- 
structed by  the  firm  to  which  he  was  engineer  to  make 
ready  to  turn  a  hose  with  boiling  water  on  to  the  mob. 
The  whole  thing  was  a  remarkable  evidence  of  the  pusillan- 
imity of  the  profitmongers  when  they  imagine,  however 
foolishly,  their  class  domination  is  threatened  by  the  wage- 
earners. 

One  result,  however,  of  the  West  End  Riots  was  that 
Champion,  Burns,  Williams,  and  myself  were  indicted  for 
-  well,  frankly,  I  never  exactly  knew  what  we  were  in- 
dicted for  —  sedition  of  some  sort,  were  arrested,  com- 
mitted for  trial  and  allowed  out  on  bail.  During  the  period 
between  the  committal  and  the  trial  Champion  and  Burns, 
the  former  more  particularly,  made  very  injudicious  and 
dangerous  speeches,  talking  about  lopping  a  million  heads 
off,  and  that  sort  of  thing,  which,  even  if  we  had  had  the 
power,  would  have  been  undesirable,  and  being  as  we  were 
could  be  no  better  than  ridiculous.  But  such  incendiary 
utterances  naturally  aroused  strong  prejudice  against  us  all. 

So  it  came  about  that  when  the  time  arrived  for  our 
trial  at  the  Old  Bailey,  there  was  quite  a  general  opinion  that 


THE   WEST  END  RIOTS  371 

we  should  all  four  suffer  for  the  sins  of  the  Fair  Trade  mob. 
I  am  bound  to  say,  to  our  joint  credit,  that  we  showed  no 
signs  of  fear  or  depression  on  this  score  in  the  dock.  I 
don't  believe  so  jolly  a  quartette  ever  stood  for  trial  in  the 
wretched  old  place  which  then  served  as  the  principal  criminal 
Court  of  the  metropolis  or  ate  lunch  more  heartily  in  the 
vaults  below.  We  drank  the  health  of  Mr.  Justice  Cave, 
our  Rhadamanthus,  and  eke  of  Sir  Charles  Russell,  our 
prosecuting  counsel. 

Among  my  other  numerous  personal  drawbacks,  as  already 
stated,  I  was  brought  up  to  the  Bar,  and,  not  for  the  first 
or  last  time  in  my  life,  this  circumstance  proved  useful  to 
me.  "  Whatever  you  do,  Hyndman,  and  no  matter  what 
counsel  are  employed  on  your  side  defend  yourself  and 
speak  last.  Remember  you  may  perhaps  have  to  outweigh 
with  the  jury  not  only  Sir  Charles  Russell's  reply  but  the 
Judge's  charge.  Don't  be  brilliant.  On  the  contrary  be  a 
trifle  dull.  Interest  them  in  your  career.  Tell  them  all  you 
have  done  so  far  as  it  bears  upon  your  case.  You  can 
argue  for  your  co-defendants  as  well  as  for  yourself."  Such 
was  the  advice  of  my  friend  Sir  Francis  Jeune  (afterwards 
Lord  St.  Helier)  who  was  kind  enough  to  go  carefully  with 
me  into  the  whole  matter.  I  followed  his  suggestions  to 
the  letter.  W.  M.  Thompson,  our  barrister,  and  Mr.  Richard- 
son, our  solicitor,  did  admirably  for  us.  Champion,  Burns, 
and  Williams  did  well,  too.  For  myself  I  had  made  up  my 
mind  to  keep  well  within  bounds  and  to  argue  the  case  of 
Burns  and  Champion,  who  really  were  in  some  serious 
danger  of  being  convicted,  owing  to  the  speeches  referred 
to,  rather  than  my  own  or  that  of  Williams,  seeing  that  we 
were  tolerably  sure  of  acquittal,  or  so  I  thought. 

Only  one  jest,  also,  did  I  allow  myself.  Strange  as  it 
may  seem,  the  trial  had  proceeded  for  quite  a  day  without 
the  exact  charge  upon  which  we  were  indicted  having  been 
formulated  precisely.  Whether  we  were  being  prosecuted 


372     THE  RECORD  OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

for  sedition,  or  for  seditious  conspiracy,  or  for  seditious 
words,  or  some  modification  of  these  accusations,  was  not 
really  known,  though  more  than  one  change  had  been 
made  in  the  form  of  indictment.  The  Chief  Commissioner 
of  Police  was  called  and  had  given  his  evidence,  and  I  was 
about  to  use  my  right  to  cross-examine,  when  I  said,  ad- 
dressing the  judge:  " Before  I  cross-examine  this  witness, 
my  lord,  it  would  greatly  relieve  the  awkwardness  of  the 
position  and  give  me  much  sounder  ground  to  go  upon  if 
your  lordship  would  kindly  inform  me  what  is  the  exact 
charge  brought  against  myself  and  my  co-defendants.77 
Ere  the  judge  had  time  to  utter  a  word  the  foreman  of  the 
jury  leant  forward  and  said,  "The  jury,  my  lord,  would 
also  be  glad  to  have  some  enlightenment  on  this  point,  as 
they  are  a  little  in  doubt  as  to  what  is  the  particular  offence 
alleged.77  Thereupon,  Mr.  Justice  Cave  speaking  to  Sir 
Charles 'Russell  began,  "I  think  myself,  Mr.  Attorney,  there 
has  been  some  ambiguity  in  this  matter,  and  I  myself.  .  .  ,77 
He  had  got  thus  far  when  I  took  the  liberty  of  interrupting 
him  with:  "If,  my  lord,  we,  the  co-defendants,  are  ignorant 
of  the  indictment  under  which  we  are  being  tried,  if  the 
jury  are  in  doubt  as  to  the  charge  upon  which  they  are  to 
render  their  verdict,  and  you  yourself,  my  lord,  have 
some  hesitation  in  regard  to  the  matter  on  which  you  will 
adjudicate,  I  venture  to  think  the  position  becomes  ex- 
ceedingly difficult  for  all  parties.77  The  whole  Court  laughed, 
the  judge  included.  Sir  Charles  arose  in  a  towering  rage, 
using,  as  usual  with  him  in  such  circumstances,  the  foulest 
of  foul  language  under  his  breath,  but  being  most  polite  and 
mellifluous  in  his  address  to  the  judge.  Of  course,  he  would 
not  admit  any  dubiety  in  the  matter ;  but  this  little  episode 
undoubtedly  helped  us  with  the  jury,  as  one  of  them  told 
me  years  afterwards. 

I  spoke  last  and,  as  stated  above,  followed  Sir  Francis 
Jeune's  advice  as  closely  as  I  could,  and  I  believe  I  did 


THE  WEST  END  RIOTS  373 

succeed  in  interesting  both  the  judge  and  jury.  The  former 
treated  us  throughout  most  handsomely,  and  summed  up 
decidedly  in  our  favour.  We  were  acquitted,  and  I  must 
say  I  think  Burns  and  Champion  were  very  well  out  of  it, 
to  say  nothing  of  Jack  Williams  and  myself.  At  the  Alham- 
bra,  whither  we  went  that  night  for  diversion  after  the 
strain  of  the  trial,  the  two  former,  several  comrades  being 
present,  warmly  thanked  me  for  having  "got  them  off." 
In  view  of  what  Burns  said  and  did  afterwards,  I  have 
some  satisfaction  in  recalling  his  profuse  gratitude  to  me 
at  the  time.  Our  acquittal  was  well  received,  and  many 
old  friends  warmly  congratulated  me  on  my  escape.  The 
trial  finished  on  10th  April,  the  anniversary  of  the  failure 
of  the  great  Chartist  demonstration  on  Kennington  Com- 
mon in  1848. 

"•Lit  had  been  very  useful  to  the  propaganda  of  Socialism 
Krom  start  to  finish.  It  had  awakened  people  to  the  fact 
that  there  really  was  a  Socialist  party  in  Great  Britain, 
and  that  the  party  numbered  among  its  members  men  who 
knew  what  they  were  talking  about.  Moreover,  the  S.D.F. 
was  encouraged  at  a  moment  when  encouragement  was 
specially  needed.  But  the  advertisement  and  reputation 
which  Burns  and  Champion  got  through  it  did  not  improve 
them  at  all,  and  eventually  led  them  out  of  the  organisation. 


CHAPTER  XXV 

RANDOLPH   CHURCHILL 

I  USED  not  unfrequently  to  meet  Randolph  Churchill, 
and  it  is  rather  strange  that,  having  known  well  three 
of  the  members  of  the  so-called  Fourth  Party,  Sir  John  Gorst, 
Sir  Henry  Drummond  Wolff,  and  Lord  Randolph  Churchill, 
I  should  never  have  met,  nor,  so  far  as  I  know,  have  seen 
Mr.  Arthur  Balfour.  Lord  Randolph  Churchill's  sudden 
rise  to  fame  and  power  was  one  of  the  most  dramatic  political 
incidents  in  modern  times.  Mr.  Gladstone's  influence  on 
the  House  of  Commons  was  so  great,  even  over  his  oppo- 
nents, that,  after  Mr.  Disraeli's  withdrawal  to  the  House  of 
Lords,  there  was  no  one  who  could  hold  his  own  with  "the 
Grand  Old  Man."  In  fact,  the  leaders  of  the  Conservative 
party  treated  Mr.  Gladstone  with  so  much  personal  defer- 
ence that  it  seemed  as  if  individually  they  agreed  with  him, 
and  only  differed  from  him  as  a  matter  of  duty  to  their 
party.  This  was,  of  course,  fatal  to  a  policy  of  attack. 
In  order  to  produce  any  serious  effect  in  a  public  assembly 
you  must  at  least  seem  to  be  in  earnest  and  lose  no  oppor- 
tunity of  forcing  on  a  fight. 

This  Lord  Randolph  Churchill  saw  clearly.  At  first  no 
one  took  him  seriously.  It  seemed  impossible  that  a  com- 
paratively young  man,  whose  previous  career  in  and  out 
of  the  House  of  Commons  had  given  no  evidence  of  special 
aptitude  for  political  life  or  knowledge  of  political  affairs, 
should  be  able,  virtually  within  a  few  months,  to  obtain  a 
dominant  position  in  the  House  of  Commons,  and  be  even 
more  feared  by  his  placid  and  well-informed  but  somewhat 

374 


RANDOLPH  CHURCHILL  375 

apathetic  leaders  than  by  the  Government.  Yet  so  it  was, 
and  the  vein  of  volcanic  arrogance  which  ran  through  him, 
inherited,  presumably,  from  the  Vane  Tempest  blood, 
actually  helped  him  under  the  conditions  in  which  he  had 
to  work. 

That  he  was  utterly  indifferent  to  other  men's  feelings 
so  long  as  he  could  make  a  point  against  them  in  politics 
he  showed  very  frequently,  and  it  has  always  seemed  to 
me  that  this  little  anecdote  displays  that  side  of  his  char- 
acter at  its  best  or  worst.  Lord  Cross  was  at  the  time  I 
speak  of  one  of  the  Conservative  leaders.  Lord  Randolph 
took  no  pains  to  disguise  his  contempt  for  that  highly 
respectable  mediocrity  so  dear  to  Queen  Victoria.  An 
amendment  was  unexpectedly  and,  as  some  thought,  im- 
properly proposed  and  allowed  to  be  discussed,  bearing 
upon  some  motion  before  the  House.  Lord  Randolph  rose 
to  speak,  and  cast  ridicule  on  the  whole  thing,  saying  that 
nobody  even  knew  what  the  amendment  was.  Lord  Cross 
scribbled  down  what  the  amendment  conveyed,  and  sent 
on  the  pencilled  chit  to  Lord  Randolph.  He  looked  at  it, 
read  it  through,  and  went  on  with  his  remarks,  only  break- 
ing off  a  little  later  to  say,  "  Things  have  indeed  come  to  a 
pretty  pass  in  this  House  when  amendments  are  passed 
round  from  one  member  to  another  on  dirty  little  scraps  of 
paper,"  and  screwing  up  the  bit  of  paper,  he  flipped  it  con- 
temptuously on  to  the  floor. 

But,  quite  apart  from  all  this,  to  a  large  extent,  assumed 
arrogance,  Lord  Randolph  breathed  a  new  spirit  into  the 
Conservatives,  roused  a  genuine  democratic  and  progressive 
spirit  in  the  ranks  of  his  party,  and,  in  my  opinion,  had 
his  health  and  nerves  been  equal  to  his  intellectual  vigour 
and  capacity,  it  is  within  the  bounds  of  possibility  that  he 
might  have  broken  down  the  Capitalist  prejudices  of  his 
own  faction  and  have  entered  peacefully  upon  the  path  of 
social  regeneration.  I  say  "  within  the  bounds  of  possi- 


376  THE  RECORD   OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

bility,"  but  even  this  with  some  hesitation ;  because  in  this 
queer  country,  with  its  huge  mass  of  ignorance  and  preju- 
dice, both  above  and  below,  it  is  exceedingly  hard  to  get 
the  people  to  move,  and,  no  matter  how  gifted  a  leader  may 
be,  he  cannot,  unless  by  some  accident  he  is  a  despot  with 
a  determination  to  force  on  obviously  needed  reforms  for 
the  benefit  of  the  next  generation,  carry  out  his  projects. 
And  Churchill  was  no  Trajan  or  Diocletian. 

I  knew  Lord  Randolph  before  he  achieved  notoriety  and 
fame.  He  was  then  careless  of  his  health,  and  singularly 
indifferent  to  the  effect  which  he  produced  upon  others. 
Self-control  was  at  no  period  the  strong  point  in  his  char- 
acter. He  had  such  great  confidence  in  his  own  judgment 
at  times  that  it  was  surprising  to  note  how  he  hesitated  at 
others.  It  was  generally  thought  that  the  only  man  whose 
opinion  he  would  ever  take  in  preference  to  his  own  was 
his  brother,  the  Duke  of  Marlborough,  who  was  unquestion- 
ably quite  as  able  as  himself  and  less  neurotic.  However 
that  may  be,  the  development  of  his  political  career  seems 
to  me  to  have  been  almost  entirely  his  own. 

Sir  John  Gorst  who,  of  course,  knew  him  intimately  and 
saw  his  career  in  the  House  of  Commons  close  at  hand, 
which  I  did  not,  holds,  I  am  aware,  a  different  view,  and 
considers  that  he  was  deeply  indebted  to  others  for  the 
information  and  opportunities  of  which  he  took  immediate 
advantage.  But  others  had  their  chances  at  the  same 
time,  and  were  supposed  to  be  at  least  equally  clever  men; 
yet  somehow  they  failed  at  the  critical  moment  to  show 
that  remarkable  brilliancy  and  power  of  decisive  action 
which  gave  Churchill  the  lead ;  while  none  of  them  ever 
exhibited  that  very  genius  of  unscrupulous  manipulation  of 
the  means  at  his  disposal  which  enabled  him  to  use  the 
group  system,  then  in  its  infancy,  to  his  own  advantage. 
No  doubt  he  had  more  than  one  great  family  behind  him; 
and  that  touch  of  aristocratic  arrogance,  not  to  say  im- 


RANDOLPH  CHURCHILL  377 

pertinence,  which  he  not  ^infrequently  exhibited,  rather  en- 
deared him  than  otherwise  to  our,  at  bottom,  undemocratic 
and  lord-loving  people.  But  I  believe  in  his  heart  he  was 
only  too  conscious  of  his  own  deficiencies,  and  even  re- 
gretted the  lack  of  self-control  in  more  than  one  direction 
which  told  so  heavily  on  his  nerves. 

There  was  in  the  man  something  of  Mirabeau  in  more 
than  one  respect,  though  he  had  a  keener  sympathy  with 
the  people  than  that  powerful  Frenchman  ever  felt.  Gifted 
with  an  extraordinarily  retentive  memory,  which  enabled 
him  to  carry  his  speeches  almost  word  for  word  in  his  head, 
and  a  very  powerful  voice  that  seemed  could  scarcely 
belong  to  so  slight  a  frame,  he  was  an  extremely  effective 
platform  speaker,  though  his  speeches  read  more  tellingly 
than  they  sounded.  The  impression  that  he  was  short  was 
quite  erroneous,  as  he  was  fully  five  feet  nine  inches  in 
height,  and  looked  taller  than  he  was.  In  private  life  he 
could  be  very  agreeable,  and  I  myself  always  found  him  so. 
Nor  did  he  display,  in  speaking  of  himself  to  me,  any  of 
that  exceeding  self-appreciation  of  his  own  powers  with 
which  he  has  been  credited.  Talking  about  his  first  appear- 
ance at  the  Indian  Council  when  he  was  Secretary  of  State 
for  India,  he  declared  that  he  felt  horribly  nervous  when  he 
took  his  seat  in  the  Presidential  Chair,  knowing,  as  he  said, 
very  little  indeed  about  the  duties  he  had  to  perform,  with 
all  these  grey-headed  and  imposing-looking  old  chaps 
seated  solemnly  around  him.  And  my  opinion  is  that  he 
really  felt  as  he  said  he  did. 

Of  course,  being  a  progressive  and  even  a  democratic 
Tory,  Lord  Randolph  Churchill  was  not  likely  to  gain  the 
approval  of  a  reactionary  old  Whig  rhetorician  like  Lord 
Rosebery,  who  tries  to  make  up  for  his  own  congenital 
incapacity  to  handle  anything  but  words  by  erecting  a 
statue  to  Cromwell,  eulogising  Bismarck  and  proclaiming 
his  admiration  for  Lord  Chatham.  But  in  his  short  bio- 


378  THE   RECORD   OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

graphical  pamphlet  on  Lord  Randolph,  he  seems  unable 
to  comprehend  that  his  criticism  to  the  effect  that  the 
subject  of  his  sketch  became  more  democratic,  as  he  became 
more  thoroughly  habituated  to  public  life,  is  really  a  strik- 
ing compliment  to  the  natural  intelligence  of  the  man 
whom  he  belittles.  Lord  Rosebery  also  quotes  with  ap- 
proval Mr.  Chamberlain's  statement  that  I  had  persuaded 
him  to  adopt  my  Socialist  suggestions.  I  do  not  believe 
myself  that  Lord  Randolph  needed  much  persuading, 
when  once  he  had  begun  to  look  into  the  subject,  as  he 
did,  he  told  me,  after  reading  my  England  for  All.  But  I 
discussed  with  him  fully  how  a  complete  social  transforma- 
tion could  be  brought  about  peacefully  in  this  country  by 
the  adoption  of  collectivist  measures  leading  onwards  by 
degrees  to  a  general  acceptance  of  the  new  state  of  things; 
and  I  argued  that,  whereas  the  leading  Conservatives  would 
oppose  such  proposals,  as  a  matter  of  business,  if  fathered 
by  the  Liberals,  the  Liberals  could  not  afford  to  resist 
them,  if  proposed  by  the  Conservatives,  for  fear  of  losing 
popularity.  This  view,  I  believe  with  Lord  Rosebery, 
Churchill  did  adopt. 

One  day,  when  Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer,  he  asked  to 
meet  me  alone  at  luncheon,  and  we  went  up  afterwards  into 
Lady  St.  Helier's  drawing-room  and  talked  for  a  long  time. 
He  suddenly  told  me  he  thought  of  resigning.  I  expressed 
my  astonishment,  as  this  appeared  to  me  a  deliberate 
knocking  down  of  all  he  had  striven  to  build  up,  and  a 
forfeiture  of  his  right  to  take  the  lead  in  a  great  and  be- 
neficent movement  from  the  top.  Thereupon  I  set  to  work 
to  argue  out  the  whole  question  of  social  revolution  and 
social  reform  from  the  economic  standpoint,  endeavouring 
to  show  that  there  was  no  time  to  be  lost  if  we  were  to 
check  the  increasing  deterioration  of  our  population,  and 
create  new  openings  for  the  rising  generation  at  home. 
Churchill  listened  attentively  enough  and  then  said:  "It  is 


RANDOLPH  CHURCHILL  379 

all  very  well  for  you  to  go  on  in  this  way,  Mr.  Hyndman; 
you  have  been  studying  these  things  all  your  life.  I  have 
to  get  them  up  as  I  go  along.  And  then/7  after  a  pause, 
"you  must  bear  in  mind  I  am  only  one  man  in  the  Cabinet, 
and  cannot  hope  to  impose  my  opinions  upon  my  colleagues." 
"  Better  one  than  none,"  I  naturally  answered,  and  I  again 
begged  him  to  think  very  seriously,  and  then  give  up  the 
idea  altogether.  But  he  gave  no  indication  that  his  inten- 
tion would  change. 

The  last  words  he  said  as  we  parted  were,  "You  may 
rely  upon  me  to  do  all  I  can  in  office  or  out  of  office  to  help 
on  your  palliative  programme."  I  thanked  him,  and  we 
went  our  ways.  When  he  resigned  so  precipitately  and 
injudiciously,  as  all  thought  at  the  time,  I  imagined  that 
his  promise  to  me  had  no  farther  significance.  I  was  wrong. 
Months  afterwards,  in  a  long  speech  at  Walsall,  he  fulfilled 
his  pledge  as  far  as  was  possible,  and  did  his  utmost  to 
give  a  lift  to  immediate  Socialistic  reforms  such  as  those 
the  Social  Democratic  Federation  had  formulated  and 
pushed  to  the  front  since  1882. 

One  incident  of  an  amusing  yet,  as  Churchill  seemed  to 
think,  of  a  serious  character,  I  must  recall.  Lord  Randolph 
was  on  his  trip  through  India,  and  it  was  announced  that  a 
meeting  had  taken  place  between  himself  and  Holkar,  the 
Maharajah  of  Indore.  I  was  writing  at  the  time  a  series 
of  imaginary  interviews  between  well-known  people  in  a 
journal  much  read  by  the  literary  class,  and  I  thought  this 
was  a  good  opportunity  for  excogitating  one  of  them. 
Accordingly,  what  Lord  Randolph  Churchill  was  supposed 
to  have  said  to  Holkar  and  Holkar  might  have  stated  to 
Churchill  duly,  appeared.  In  London  the  interview  was 
read,  as  it  was  intended  to  be  read,  as  a  colourable  inven- 
tion of  what  might  conceivably  have  passed  between  the 
two  men.  As  I  knew  what  Churchill's  private  opinions 
were,  and  could  form  a  pretty  shrewd  guess  at  what  Holkar 


380  THE  RECORD   OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

thought  at  the  back  of  his  mind,  I  daresay,  as  then  my  own 
thoughts  were  very  full  of  India,  what  I  wrote  was  fairly 
near  the  mark.  For  what  followed,  I  admit  I  was  not  pre- 
pared. No  sooner  did  the  paper  in  which  the  interview 
was  published  reach  India,  than  Holkar  sent  off  a  telegram, 
followed  by  a  special  messenger,  to  the  Viceroy  to  declare 
solemnly  that  he  never  said  anything  of  the  sort.  That 
was  not  bad  as  a  beginning. 

What  occurred  later  was  still  better.  No  sooner  did 
Churchill  get  back  to  England  than  he  went  straight  to  the 
editor  of  the  journal  referred  to,  and  asked  him,  "Who 

the wrote  that  infernal  interview  between  Holkar  and 

me?  "  The  editor  told  him.  Half  an  hour  afterwards  Lord 
Randolph's  name  was  brought  in  to  me  at  home,  and  I 
went  into  the  drawing-room  to  see  him.  He  was  furiously 
angry,  and  wouldn't  see  the  humorous  side  of  it  at  all. 
Though  I  had  a  hard  matter  of  it  to  keep  from  laughing 
myself,  I  listened  patiently  to  his  objurgations.  He  was 
much  more  concerned  for  Holkar  than  he  was  about  his 
own  share  in  the  dialogue.  He  would  not  even  see  that 
the  whole  thing  being  purely  and  obviously  quite  imaginary 
and  appearing  anonymously,  nobody  could  really  be  hurt. 
Eventually,  however,  he  took  a  calmer  view  of  the  matter, 
and  admitted  that  Holkar  was  not  likely  to  lose  a  single 
gun  from  his  salute,  or  a  pice  from  his  savings  by  what  had 
happened;  possibly  even  that  had  he  refrained  from  dis- 
playing such  exceeding  eagerness  to  excuse  himself  in 
regard  to  words  he  never  uttered,  his  position  might  have 
been  more  dignified. 

The  last  I  saw  of  Lord  Randolph  Churchill  was  at  Dover 
on  his  final  journey  home.  My  wife  and  I  were  on  the 
Admiralty  Pier,  not  knowing  that  he  was  coming  by  the 
boat  which  was  then  making  the  harbour.  We  heard  as 
we  went  up  that  he  was  on  board,  and  hi  a  worse  condition 
than  had  been  represented.  This  was  undoubtedly  true, 


RANDOLPH  CHURCHILL  381 

and  it  was  sad  to  see  one  whom  we  had  last  met  apparently 
in  good  health  and  spirits  utterly  broken  down,  and  obviously 
done  for.  A  mournful  close  to  a  most  promising  career 
followed  soon  after,  and  with  his  disappearance  the  last 
hope  of  a  useful  constructive  social  policy  from  the  Tory 
side  came  to  an  end. 


CHAPTER  XXVI 

SWIMMING  AGAINST  THE   STREAM 

I  HAVE  referred  incidentally  above  to  the  fact  that  I 
was  turned  out  of  the  New  University  Club  in  St. 
James's  Street  for  a  speech  on  the  Embankment  in  favour  of 
the  unemployed.  As  I  had  given  up  my  membership  at  the 
Garrick,  which  I  joined  in  1874,  just  before,  expenses  in 
connection  with  the  Socialist  movement  having  become  so 
considerable  as  not  to  permit  of  my  belonging  to  two  clubs, 
I  found  myself  clubless  in  London,  which  at  first  was  a 
curious  sensation  for  me.  I  mention  this  matter  of  my 
expulsion  from  the  New  University  Club  as  an  example  of 
the  furious  prejudice  stirred  up  in  those  days  among  the 
educated  upper  middle  class  against  any  one  who  took  the 
side  of  the  people  in  earnest. 

I  was  not  only  an  original  member  of  the  New  Univer- 
sity Club,  composed  exclusively,  of  course,  of  Oxford  and 
Cambridge  men,  but  I  had  rendered,  if  I  may  say  so,  quite 
unusual  service  for  many  years  on  the  Committee,  chiefly 
in  conjunction  with  Mr.  Fenton  in  connection  with  the 
kitchens,  and  Sir  Courtenay  Ilbert  in  regard  to  the  library. 
This  was  generally  known  and  recognised.  Moreover,  the 
club  was  in  no  sense  a  political  club,  and  consequently  had 
no  right  to  consider  what  took  place  in  the  political  field. 
Nevertheless,  the  members  in  my  absence  voted  me  out  by 
a  sufficient  majority.  This  strange  incapacity  of  Univer- 
sity men  in  this  country  to  understand  the  serious  issues  of 
modern  life,  or  to  appreciate  any  work  done  out  of  their 
own  particular  sphere  in  politics,  in  the  Church,  or  in  the 


SWIMMING  AGAINST  THE  STREAM  383 

law,  in  football,  rowing,  and  cricket,  is  peculiar  to  this 
country. 

Elsewhere  a  much  wider  view  of  the  situation  is  taken 
by  men  in  the  same  position,  and  it  is  the  fact  also  that, 
from  whatever  cause,  the  aristocracy  here,  however  re- 
actionary and  even  tyrannous  they  may  be  in  their  public 
life,  are  much  more  courteous  in  private  than  the  educated 
upper  middle  class.  My  own  case  is  a  remarkable  example 
of  this.  Going  to  a  reception  at  Lady  Stanhope's  shortly 
after  my  trial  at  the  Old  Bailey,  when  I  had  thus  been  un- 
ceremoniously and  quite  illegally  turned  out  from  the  New 
University  Club,  I  was  naturally  a  little  anxious  to  see 
what  would  happen.  I  was  met  with  the  utmost  courtesy, 
some  of  my  old  friends  present,  who  happened  to  be  men 
of  high  rank,  going  out  of  their  way  to  congratulate  me 
upon  my  acquittal.  That,  of  course,  could  not  last,  or  at 
any  rate  we  felt  it  could  not,  so  we  retired  from  society  of 
this  kind,  to  paraphrase  Disraeli,  in  order  that  society 
should  not  retire  from  us,  and  we  were  none  the  less  dis- 
posed to  do  this  because  pecuniary  considerations  tended 
in  the  same  direction. 

Besides,  at  this  time  the  conditions  in  regard  to  the 
production  and  distribution  of  Justice,  as  already  recorded, 
became  very  trying,  I  had  my  private  business  to  attend 
to,  and  we  were  engaged,  in  addition  to  other  work,  in  an 
earnest  endeavour  to  bring  about  a  thorough  reorganisation 
of  London  municipal  government.  Much  agitation  in  this 
direction  had  been  carried  on  by  Sir  Charles  Dilke,  and  Mr. 
Firth  as  members  for  Chelsea,  aided  by  Samuel  Beale  and 
others.  But  we,  of  course,  wanted  a  great  deal  more  from 
a  Metropolitan  Council  than  its  Radical  advocates  would  be 
satisfied  with,  and  in  my  pamphlet  entitled  A  Commune 
for  London  I  endeavoured  to  give  these  wider  views  of 
what  might  be  done  for  our  great  city.  Of  course  we  got 
no  credit  for  this  work,  and  it  is  sad  to  see  how  more  than 


384  THE  RECORD   OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

twenty  years  later  nearly  all  we  did  has  been  turned  to  the 
advantage  of  the  well-to-do,  the  interests  of  the  poor  dis- 
tricts being  almost  entirely  neglected.  The  housing  ques- 
tion in  particular  has  been  dealt  with  in  a  farcical  manner. 
Even  the  ordinary  increase  of  the  population  has  not  been 
met  by  the  provision  of  new  structures;  the  buildings 
erected  are  wretched  affairs  quite  unsuited  to  people  with 
children,  rents  are  higher  than  they  were,  and  the  over- 
crowding is  worse  than  ever  it  was. 

The  year  1887  was  a  very  unfortunate  year  for  us.  The 
expenditure  of  time  and  money  on  Socialism,  and  the 
prejudice  aroused  against  me  on  account  of  my  opinions, 
put  us  in  such  a  position  that  we  were  obliged  to  sell  our 
house  in  Devonshire  Street,  and  then  and  for  all  the  years 
afterwards  our  existence  has  been  by  no  means  devoid  of 
care.  Socialist  work  always  tends  that  way.  Taking  the 
side  of  the  weak  is  a  very  fine  thing  to  read  about  in  a 
novel,  or  to  see  played  as  a  part  on  the  stage,  but  in  actual 
life  it  is  a  very  serious  and  dangerous  thing  indeed  to  do. 
I  have  found  it  so,  certainly,  both  in  regard  to  the  people 
of  England  and  the  people  of  India.  But  trying  as  the 
situation  has  been  for  us  it  has  too  often  been  worse  for 
others.  Two  of  the  most  brilliant  men  I  have  ever  known, 
in  their  respective  ways,  Dr.  Geldart  the  Congregational 
minister,  and  Pickard  Cambridge  the  scientist,  having  both 
thrown  themselves  into  the  cause  of  Socialism  to  such  an 
extent  as  to  cut  off  their  means  of  living  almost  entirely, 
preferred  not  to  struggle  on  any  longer  against  the  petty 
degradations  to  which  poverty  exposed  them,  and  joined 
the  majority  before  their  time.  Many  stalwart  workers 
have  done  the  same  unnoticed,  and  others  have  gone  under 
from  sheer  despair  and  overwork:  the  hopeless  conditions 
of  to-day  telling  most  seriously  upon  men  of  good  physique 
but  sensitive  dispositions. 

Yet  there  is  some  interest  and  excitement  and  even,  in 


SWIMMING  AGAINST  THE  STREAM  385 

its  grim  way,  amusement  in  entering  a  direct  personal  pro- 
test, at  whatever  cost,  against  the  terrible  system  which 
has  humanity  in  its  grip.  At  one  of  the  periods  (1897) 
when  things  were  worse  than  usual  in  India  it  was  decided 
to  raise  a  fund  in  England  of  £500,000  in  order  to  help  the 
suffering  inhabitants  of  Hindustan.  An  influential  meeting 
was  to  be  held  in  the  Mansion  House  in  furtherance  of  this 
scheme,  at  which  the  then  Secretary  of  State  for  India,  an 
old  acquaintance  of  mine  in  the  cricket  field  and  elsewhere, 
Lord  George  Hamilton,  was  to  be  present  and  the  Duke 
of  Connaught  would  also  attend  to  support  the  Lord  Mayor 
in  the  Chair.  Now  as  we  drain  out  of  India  upwards  of 
£30,000,000  a  year  without  any  commercial  return  what- 
ever, and  this  terrible  extortion  of  wealth  by  way  of  economic 
tribute  is  the  chief  cause  of  the  impoverishment  of  the 
200,000,000  inhabitants  of  British  Territory  and  the  con- 
sequent famine  and  plague  which  they  suffer  from,  I  thought 
it  was  a  piece  of  grotesque  hypocrisy  that  we  should  pretend 
to  send  back  half-a-million  pounds  to  those  who  were  starv- 
ing and  dying,  when  all  the  time  we  were  taking  from  them 
sixty-fold  that  amount  just  in  the  way  of  business.  Nay, 
we  should  take  a  large  amount,  over  and  above  the 
£30,000,000  and  more  regularly  extracted,  by  way  of 
bonus  to  the  English  railway  shareholders  for  the  transpor- 
tation of  the  unusual  quantity  of  grain  to  the  afflicted 
districts. 

That  we  should  pretend  that  this  dole  back  of  money  in 
charity  could  be  of  any  great  benefit  while  the  original 
systematic  depletion  continued  as  before  and  was  even  en- 
hanced, seemed  to  me  such  a  preposterous  piece  of  Tartufferie 
that  I  determined  that  I  for  one  would  raise  my  voice 
against  the  whole  thing.  I  therefore  sent  an  amendment 
to  the  Lord  Mayor  and  was  invited  to  go  and  see  him  with 
reference  to  it.  I  went.  Whether  the  amendment  was 
right  or  wrong  was  not,  it  then  appeared,  of  any  moment. 

2c 


386  THE  RECORD   OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

The  meeting  also,  though  called  for  a  public  purpose,  was 
not,  so  I  was  told,  a  public  meeting  at  all.  Besides,  it  was 
to  be  held  in  the  Mansion  House  and,  this  settled  it,  a 
Royal  Duke  was  to  support  the  resolution.  Obviously,  it 
would  be  quite  out  of  place  for  me,  though  at  that  time 
paying  rates  in  the  City  of  London,  to  disturb  the  other- 
wise harmonious  proceedings  in  this  rude  manner.  If  I  did 
I  should  certainly  be  removed. 

This  did  not  alarm  me  at  all.  The  meeting  was  held  and 
in  due  course  I  moved  my  amendment,  or  tried  to  do  so, 
when  two  or  more  stalwart  constables  appeared  and,  after 
a  nominal  resistance,  I  was  escorted  out.  The  resolution 
to  send  £500,000  to  India  in  return  for  the  receipt  of 
£30,000,000  was  carried,  and  nobody  was  allowed  to  point 
out  the  ghastly  irony  of  the  whole  proceeding.  But  a  cer- 
tain amount  of  discussion  followed  in  the  press  and  some 
day,  probably,  when  India  emancipates  herself  from  our 
ruinous  domination,  the  English  people  will  look  back  and 
understand  that  those  of  us  who  persistently  opposed  the 
official  view  had  good  reason  for  doing  so,  and  that  the 
Indians  had  still  better  reasons  for  objecting  to  being  "bled," 
as  Lord  Salisbury  phrased  it. 

\/  Throughout  these  earlier  years  we  carried  on  a  continu- 
ous campaign  in  favour  of  free  speech  in  the  open  air,  in 
the  parks  and  other  public  places,  where  no  real  obstruction 
or  annoyance  could  be  caused.  Some  of  these  attempts  to 
uphold  what  we  believed  to  be  our  rights  led  to  the  prosecu- 
tion of  our  speakers,  and  several  of  them  went  to  gaol. 
The  most  remarkable  and  exciting  of  these  prohibited  meet- 
ings, apart  from  the  gathering  which  was  to  have  been  held 
in  Trafalgar  Square  but  was  prevented  by  a  great  display 
of  police  and  military,  was  the  great  demonstration  hi  Dod 
Street  at  the  East  End  of  London.  I  suppose  even  those 
who  were  responsible  for  attempting  to  stop  those  meetings 
would  now  admit  that  there  was  never  any  reason  why 


SWIMMING  AGAINST  THE  STREAM  387 

they  should  not  have  been  allowed  free  course  on  Sunday, 
the  only  day  on  which  we  used  the  street  for  this  purpose. 
The  street  was  one  of  factories  and  warehouses,  and  there 
was  literally  no  traffic  of  any  kind.  However,  the  authori- 
ties decided  to  stop  us,  and  we  decided  to  go  on.  All  the 
Socialists  in  London  sank  their  differences  on  this  occasion, 
and  a  very  serious  state  of  things  was  brought  about.  I 
have  always  thought  we  got  very  well  out  of  it. 

At  that  particular  time  we  had  a  number  of  retired 
officers  and  old  soldiers  with  us.  They  took  control  of  the 
demonstration  on  our  behalf  and  our  people  were  very 
much  better  organised  and  more  accustomed  to  marching 
together  in  military  fashion  than  we  are  to-day.  That  was 
the  danger.  As  the  demonstration  neared  Dod  Street  a 
great  force  of  police  marched  down  to  cut  us  off  and  head 
us  back.  But  precisely  at  the  same  moment  a  very  much 
greater  force  of  our  sympathisers,  also  in  disciplined  array 
and  obviously  acting  under  orders,  marched  from  other 
streets  with  the  clear  intention  of  arguing  the  matter  out 
with  the  police  forcibly  then  and  there.  Of  course,  even  if 
we  had  won  at  the  moment,  which  I  believe  we  should  by 
sheer  weight  of  numbers,  there  could  have  been  but  one 
end  to  the  matter,  in  the  long  run,  so  far  as  physical  force 
was  concerned ;  and  those  of  us  who  would  have  been  held 
responsible  for  the  conflict,  including  some  of  the  best 
known  Socialists  and  Radicals  in  London  —  for  the  Radi- 
cals were  with  us  —  must  have  seen  the  inside  of  gaol. 
Happily  at  this  moment  when  collision  seemed  inevitable 
notification  from  headquarters  came  to  the  Superintendent 
in  charge,  and  the  meeting  was  allowed  to  proceed.  We 
regarded  this  as  a  great  triumph  at  the  time,  and  such  no 
doubt  it  was.  But  if  I  am  asked  what  came  of  it  in  the 
long  run,  I  can  only  say,  "It  was  a  famous  victory." 


CHAPTER  XXVII 

WILHELM  LIEBKNECHT  AND  JEAN  JAURES 

OF  all  the  Socialist  leaders  I  ever  met,  Wilhelm  Lieb- 
knecht  to  my  mind  most  fully  deserved  the  title  of 
"  statesman."  And  I  say  this  certainly  without  any  strong 
prejudice  in  favour  of  his  attitude  towards  English  Social 
Democrats,  as  for  many  years  he  took  what  I  may  call  the 
Engels  view  of  our  movement,  and  steadily  supported  our 
worst  enemies  against  us.  But  his  general  capacity  must  not 
be  judged  by  what  he  himself  afterwards  admitted  was  a  great 
mistake.  He  was  exceedingly  loyal  to  his  friends,  could 
not  or  would  not  believe  anything  bad  of  them,  and,  being 
very  intimate  with  Engels,  Eleanor  Marx  and  Edward 
Aveling,  he  could  not  at  the  time  understand  that  they 
might  possibly  be  quite  wrong  in  their  view  of  us.  Yet 
Liebknecht  did  us  great  mischief.  He  supported  first  the 
Socialist  League,  thus  intensifying  the  misunderstanding 
between  the  sections,  and  then  Dr.  Edward  Aveling.  Ave- 
ling was  a  man  of  very  bad  character,  as  the  terrible  tragedy 
which  brought  Eleanor  Marx  to  her  end  afterwards  dis- 
closed to  the  world.  Liebknecht  saw  most  of  his  draw- 
backs; but  his  affection  and  regard  for  Eleanor,  virtually 
Aveling's  wife,  induced  him,  having  seen,  to  shut  his  eyes. 

I  have  no  belief  myself  whatever  in  the  vox  populi  vox  dei 
notion.  The  counting  of  noses  is  only  made  use  of  in  order 
to  avoid  the  resort  to  brute  force.  Democracy  is  either 
very  jealous  of  merit,  or  very  servile  to  it,  if  merit  is  allied 
to  resolute  will  and  power.  Yet,  with  all  the  strong  feeling 
against  the  judgment  of  their  own  elected  representatives 


WILHELM  LIEBKNECHT  AND  JEAN  JAURES         389 

which  has  always  prevailed  in  our  Social  Democratic  Party, 
but  for  Liebknecht  and  the  influence  of  himself  and  his 
foreign  friends,  we  should  probably  have  kept  Aveling  out 
of  our  body  and  have  saved  Eleanor  Marx's  life,  which  at 
the  time  of  her  death  was  of  the  greatest  value  to  the  party 
both  in  this  country  and  abroad.  So,  I  repeat,  I  have  no 
reason  to  err  on  the  side  of  excessive  appreciation  of  Lieb- 
knecht's  capacity. 

But  he  had  great  abilities,  and  they  were  always  fully  at 
his  command.  He  possessed  faculties  of  administration, 
democratic  control  and  tactful  management  which  are  rare 
in  any  party,  and  specially  rare  among  Socialists.  He  was 
also  one  of  the  very  few  Continental  Socialists  who  under- 
stood England  well,  and  who  saw  that,  with  all  our  revolt- 
ing conservatism  at  home  and  unscrupulous  imperialism 
abroad,  we  might  still  play  a  great  and  useful  part  in  the 
coming  revolutionary  period.  He,  therefore,  always  main- 
tained an  attitude  of  friendship  towards  this  country,  and 
made  a  point  of  keeping  himself  thoroughly  well  informed 
as  to  what  was  going  on.  Though  as  genuine  a  revolutionist 
as  ever  took  part  in  the  Socialist  movement,  he  put  his 
extreme  opinions  in  the  mildest  and  most  convincing  way, 
both  in  speech  and  in  writing.  A  thoroughgoing  inter- 
nationalist, he  recognised  the  great  value  of  nationality  and 
the  diversity  of  faculty  which  the  various  civilised  coun- 
tries, owing  to  their  different  history  and  stages  of  develop- 
ment, contribute  to  the  common  stock.  He  was  also  an 
ardent  advocate  of  peace,  and  at  a  period  when  the  great 
majority  of  his  countrymen  were  infuriated  against  the 
French,  he  proclaimed  his  admiration  for  that  fine  people 
and,  with  his  friend  and  comrade  Bebel,  suffered  for  his 
protest  against  the  war  of  1870  by  undergoing  a  lengthy 
term  of  imprisonment. 

Liebknecht  was  a  Socialist  when  Socialism  involved 
sacrifice  and  suffering  of  every  kind.  Sixty-three  years 


390  THE  RECORD   OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

ago  to  be  a  revolutionary  Socialist  was  no  light  matter. 
Like  many  other  Socialist  leaders,  Liebknecht  was  a  man 
of  University  distinction  and  high  culture  and  attainments. 
Yet  after  ;48  he  found  himself  expatriated  here  in  England, 
in  dire  poverty  and  with  little  prospect  of  earning  a  decent 
livelihood.  When  he  first  took  refuge  on  these  shores,  in 
fact,  he  was  in  great  distress,  and  he  told  me  that  so  hard 
pushed  at  one  time  were  he  and  a  friend,  who  shared  the 
same  room  in  a  poor  quarter,  that  they  had  pawned  even 
all  their  clothing;  until  they  had,  in  addition  to  their  coats 
and  waistcoats,  but  a  single  pair  of  trousers  between  them. 
This  pair  Liebknecht  wore  when  he  went  out  searching  for 
employment,  his  comrade  lying  in  bed  the  while  he  did  so; 
or  Liebknecht  lay  in  bed  while  his  partner  in  hard  times 
took  his  turn  in  the  seeking  for  work.  At  last,  when  they 
were  in  utter  extremity,  first  Liebknecht  and  then  his  com- 
panion got  something  to  do. 

During  the  years  he  was  compelled  to  remain  in  this 
country  Liebknecht  learned  English  thoroughly,  and  was 
ever  after  able  to  address  an  audience  in  fluent  and  well- 
chosen  language,  as  well  as,  of  course,  to  converse  with 
ease  and  with  a  marvellous  knowledge  of  the  common  talk 
of  the  day:  differing  in  this  respect  from  other  foreigners 
who  have  mastered  our  tongue  but  speak  it  almost  too 
correctly.  It  was  his  experience  of  English  life  and  English 
ways,  his  acquaintance  with  French  life  and  French  ways, 
and  his  sympathy  also  with  Italy  and  Italians,  whose  coun- 
try and  language  he  likewise  knew,  which  enabled  him  to 
command  great  direct  influence  at  the  International  Con- 
gresses, an  influence  that  was  always  exerted  on  the  side  of 
peace  and  good  feeling,  though  never  in  the  sense  of  com- 
promise, or  the  whittling  away  of  principles. 

Towards  the  close  of  his  life  I  got  to  know  Liebknecht 
very  well  indeed,  and  the  more  I  knew  of  him  the  more 
respect  and  even  affection  I  felt  for  him.  Liebknecht  was  a 


WILHELM  LIEBKNECHT  AND  JEAN  JAURES          391 

descendant  of  the  famous  Martin  Luther,  though  I  am  not 
at  all  sure  he  felt  very  proud  of  his  ancestor,  whose  views 
and  action  in  regard  to  the  revolting  peasant  farmers  he 
certainly  did  not  share  and  indeed  vehemently  denounced. 
It  is  scarcely  too  much  to  say,  without  detracting  in  any 
way  from  the  splendid  services  of  Marx  and  Engels,  the 
admirable  agitation  of  Lassalle,  the  powerful  oratory  and 
unshakeable  persistence  of  Bebel,  and  the  useful  organising 
faculty  of  Auer,  Motteler,  Singer,  and  others,  that  Lieb- 
knecht  more  than  any  other  man  was  the  founder  of  German 
political  Social  Democracy  as  we  now  know  it.  On  his 
return  to  Germany  his  one  idea  from  the  first  seems  to  have 
been  to  consolidate  German  Social  Democracy  into  one 
effective  whole. 

For  this  work  he  was  peculiarly  fitted  in  every  way.  It 
was  quite  impossible  to  make  Liebknecht  angry;  yet  he 
gave  no  impression  whatever  of  being  cold  or  indifferent. 
However  strongly  he  might  feel  upon  any  matter,  his 
emotions  were  invariably  under  the  control  of  his  intellect. 
Yet  somehow  you  felt  the  emotions  were  there.  He  would 
say  and  do  really  dangerous  things  in  the  coolest  and  most 
unemotional  way,  as  if  he  himself  did  not  fully  appreciate 
the  full  significance  of  them,  though  really,  of  course,  quite 
aware  all  the  time  of  their  peril  to  himself,  and  of  the  effect 
they  would  produce  upon  others. 

Of  the  many  able  speakers  and  orators  I  have  heard  I 
do  not  know  one  who  has  possessed  in  so  high  a  degree  the 
power  of  clear,  lucid,  persuasive  statement,  without  a 
particle  of  rhetoric,  or  any  outward  evidence  of  passion,  as 
Liebknecht.  Yet  he  was  always  interesting  and  nearly 
always  produced  the  effect  he  desired.  So  calm  and  capable 
did  he  appear  at  all  times  that  people  were  apt  to  forget 
that  Liebknecht  was  perpetually  running  very  great  risks 
in  his  business-like,  unperturbed  fashion.  It  became  quite 
natural  for  him  to  incur  terms  of  imprisonment,  about 


392  THE  RECORD   OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

which  he  made  no  fuss  at  all,  either  when  he  went  in  or 
when  he  came  out.  True,  German  political  prisoners  are 
treated  with  reasonable  courtesy  and  consideration.  They 
are  not  handled  as  Davitt  and  others  have  been  treated  in 
this  country  in  the  past,  or  like  lady  suffragettes  are  to-day, 
as  if  they  were  the  vilest  of  unseemly  ruffians.  A  German 
political  prisoner  is  regarded  as  a  political  prisoner,  and  is 
entitled  to  decent  surroundings  and  to  the  use  of  his  books 
and  papers.  Continental  usages  are  never  so  wholly  brutal 
and  blackguardly  in  this  respect  as  those  of  the  British 
upper  classes,  who  reserve  all  their  sympathy  for  the  victims 
of  the  tyranny  of  others,  and  resort  freely  to  the  physical 
and  mental  torture  of  their  political  opponents  themselves. 

Nevertheless,  imprisonment  and  restraint  were,  in  the 
best  of  circumstances,  exceedingly  trying  for  a  man  of 
Liebknecht's  characteristic  love  of  freedom,  and  he  felt  his 
periods  of  incarceration  very  much.  Yet  he  risked  their 
recurrence  without  the  slightest  hesitation  whenever  he 
thought  it  necessary  to  do  so.  It  is  sometimes  said  that 
protests  ineffective  at  the  time  are  really  useless,  and  that 
the  sacrifices  entailed  by  the  forcing  to  the  front  of  unpopu- 
lar opinions  only  injure  the  cause,  while  too  frequently 
crippling  individuals.  I  am  not  of  that  opinion. 

When  Liebknecht  and  Bebel  bitterly  opposed  Bismarck's 
war  against  France  in  1870,  and  were  incontinently  clapped 
in  gaol,  they,  by  their  action  on  that  occasion,  laid  the 
foundations  of  a  definite  policy  for  the  International  Social 
Democracy,  as  being  at  all  times  and  under  all  conditions  in 
vehement  antagonism  to  anything  in  the  shape  of  aggres- 
sive warfare,  and  set  an  example  of  individual  courage 
and  conduct  in  this  sense  which  Socialists  of  other  nations 
have  since  been  proud  to  follow.  From  that  day  to  this 
the  course  taken  by  Bebel  and  Liebknecht  at  a  time  of 
furious  chauvinism  in  Germany,  when  the  memory  of  past 
injuries  by  France  was  in  every  mind,  has  been  regarded  by 


WILHELM  LIEBKNECHT  AND  JEAN  JAURES          393 

all  lovers  of  humanity  as  one  of  the  finest  instances  of  self- 
sacrifice  in  the  cause  of  peace  ever  heard  of. 

It  may  be  also  that  what  is  said  to  have  occurred  when 
the  German  armies  were  encamped  around  Paris  influenced 
Liebknecht  in  his  efforts  to  bring  about  a  united  Socialist 
party  in  Germany.  It  is  certain  that  at  one  period  during 
the  siege  of  Paris  there  was  clear  evidence  at  Versailles 
that  the  German  army  was  making  ready  to  withdraw. 
There  was  no  sufficient  cause  for  this  in  the  movements  or 
success  of  the  French  armies,  who  were  completely  held  in 
check  by  the  Germans.  What,  then,  was  the  reason  for 
this  unexpected  change  of  plan,  shortly  afterwards  again 
completely  abandoned?  For  some  time  before  this  hesitat- 
ing policy  the  Marxist  party  in  Berlin,  to  which  Bebel  and 
Liebknecht,  of  course,  belonged,  had  been  endeavouring  to 
organise  a  great  rising  in  the  German  Metropolis,  and  for 
that  purpose  had  opened  negotiations  with  the  Lassalle 
Socialist  party  which  was  national  rather  than  international 
in  its  learnings  and  was  then  headed  by  Schweitzer.  Cer- 
tain it  is  that  no  sooner  were  Liebknecht  and  Bebel  released 
from  prison  than  they  set  to  work  to  endeavour  to  combine 
the  two  great  Socialist  sections  into  one  effective  army  of 
the  German  proletariat. 

It  was  a  great  policy  but  by  no  means  an  easy  under- 
taking. We  of  to-day  who  are  accustomed  to  regard  the 
great  German  Social  Democratic  Party  as  by  far  the  best 
organised,  the  most  highly  disciplined,  and  the  most  com- 
pletely equipped  of  all  Socialist  parties  can  scarcely  appre- 
ciate the  difficulties  which  had  to  be  overcome,  with  an 
active  Anarchist  section  still  ready  to  take  advantage  of 
and  exaggerate  any  mistakes,  before  success  in  this  splendid 
endeavour  could  be  achieved.  It  was  not  attained  with- 
out terrible  stress  and  strain,  and  some  of  the  most  bitter 
opposition  to  the  whole  scheme  actually  came  from  Marx 
and  Engels  in  London.  They  feared  that  the  Lassalleaner 


394  THE  RECORD   OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

or  Schweitzer  party,  being  the  more  numerous  and  having 
the  more  attractive  programme  of  German  Nationalism  at 
their  back,  would  absorb  and  render  futile  the  wider  propa- 
ganda of  International  Social  Democracy.  It  was  a  very 
trying  time. 

But  Liebknecht  had,  as  he  assured  me,  the  most  com- 
plete confidence  in  victory  from  the  first.  In  fact  he  felt 
more  confidence  in  the  eventual  triumph  of  the  views  of 
Marx  than  Marx  did  himself.  If  the  two  parties  once  came 
together  then,  no  matter  how  numerous  the  other  body 
might  be,  the  gospel  accorded  to  Marx  would  prevail. 
And  prevail  it  did.  But  it  required  no  little  coolness  and 
determination  on  the  part  of  Liebknecht,  Bebel  and  their 
friends  to  fight  the  good  fight  of  Socialist  unity  in  Germany 
against  the  two  great  theorists  of  modern  Socialism.  Writ- 
ing in  1911  when  Social  Democracy  is  by  far  the  strongest 
single  political  party  in  Germany,  when  its  press  is  becom- 
ing every  day  a  greater  power  in  the  land,  and  at  a  time 
when  the  manifest  growth  of  its  voting  record  is  so  great 
that  the  Government  is  in  serious  alarm,  and  may  even 
hurry  on  its  programme  of  aggression  in  order  to  forestall 
the  period  when  the  Social  Democrats  will  be  able  to  put  a 
final  stop  to  militarism  and  imperialism,  and  compel  a 
return  to  the  unenvied  pacific  policy  of  the  old  German 
Bund  before  Prussia  and  the  Hohenzollerns  gained  their 
harmful  predominance  —  writing  with  such  results  achieved 
it  is  difficult  to  overrate  the  service  rendered  to  Germany 
and  the  world  at  large  by  Wilhelm  Liebknecht  when  he  did 
so  much  to  place  the  party  on  a  sound  and  permanent 
footing. 

Though  now  and  then  we  may  become  very  impatient 
and  wish  that  so  powerful  a  force  could  be  used  to  anticipate 
events  somewhat;  yet  on  sober  reflection  we  are  bound  to 
admit  that  never  in  the  whole  history  of  mankind  has  such 
a  tremendous  social  revolution  as  that  involved  in  the 


f 
WILHELM  LIEBKNECHT  AND  JEAN  JAURES         395 

triumph  of  organised  Social  Democracy  been  so  calmly, 
resolutely,  and  it  may  fairly  be  said  scientifically  prepared. 
Heine  was  right:  when  the  German  revolution  does  come 
it  will  far  transcend  in  scope,  significance,  and  permanence 
the  French  Revolution  of  1789.  Four  millions  of  German 
voters,  though  not  perhaps  all  thorough  Social  Democrats, 
still  sympathisers  with  the  Socialists,  at  least  two-fifths  of 
the  trained  soldiery  of  the  fatherland,  and  a  large  and 
growing  proportion  of  the  educated  classes  feel  that  the 
day  of  victory  is  slowly  but  inevitably  coming  nearer,  and 
that  this  victory  when  it  is  won  will  be  largely  due  to  Wil- 
helm  Liebknecht  and  his  brother  worker,  August  Bebel. 

When  Liebknecht  had  overcome  his  prejudices  against 
the  Social  Democratic  Federation  and  myself,  we  got  to 
know  one  another  very  well.  This  change  began  at  the 
great  International  Congress  of  1896  in  London,  when  I 
presided  at  a  very  stormy  sitting,  and  succeeded  to  a  large 
extent  in  calming  down  Anarchist  violence;  when,  too,  at 
the  close  of  the  proceedings  one  of  these  same  Anarchists, 
a  black  sheep  among  the  brethren  of  that  persuasion,  I 
readily  admit,  took  revenge  upon  the  Social  Democratic 
leader  by  prematurely  communising  Liebknecht's  watch  to 
his  own  use.  At  the  principal  evening  meeting  I  was  chair- 
man, and  I  had  a  good  opportunity  of  judging  of  Lieb- 
knecht's admirable  powers  of  exposition  in  a  language  not 
his  own.  No  Englishman  of  our  day  could  have  delivered 
a  better  speech  in  its  calm,  masterly  and  persuasive  style; 
and  one  felt  throughout,  devoid  as  it  was  of  any  attempt  to 
give  prominence  to  the  speaker,  that  here  was  a  genuine 
statesman  of  Social  Democracy. 

Perhaps  the  coolness  and  solidity  of  Liebknecht  were  the 
more  marked  by  reason  of  the  contrast  with  the  Spanish 
orator,  Pablo  Iglesias.  What  he  said,  translated  by  La- 
f argue,  was  excellent ;  but  his  way  of  saying  it  was  so  im- 
pressive that,  although  the  audience  did  not  understand  a 


396  THE  RECORD   OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

word  of  his  language,  he  was  interrupted  by  bursts  of 
applause  at  several  points  in  his  address  —  a  thing  which  I 
have  only  once  noted  since,  under  similar  circumstances, 
.where  the  speaker  was  not  understood.  I  mention  this  here 
because  we  English  are  apt  to  underrate  the  value  of  appro- 
priate gesture  in  public  speaking,  and  I  never  felt  this  more 
keenly  than  when  I  observed  the  extraordinary  effect  pro- 
duced upon  this  crowded  meeting  by  Iglesias. 

From  1896  onwards  my  relations  with  Wilhelm  Lieb- 
knecht,  as  already  said,  became  very  close,  and  led  to  one 
of  the  most  interesting  episodes  in  the  way  of  personal 
intercourse  I  can  recall.  This  was  when  Liebknecht  and 
Jaures  both  stayed  with  us  at  the  same  time  in  Queen 
Anne's  Gate.  There  could  not  be  a  greater  contrast  between 
two  personalities  than  that  between  these  two  able  men. 
whose  services  have  made  so  deep  a  mark  on  the  records 
of  Socialism  in  France  and  Germany.  Liebknecht,  cool, 
able,  cautiously  daring,  and  quite  devoid  of  oratorical  arts 
and  graces.  Jaures,  brilliant,  dashing,  and  apparently 
rash,  though  really  much  more  prudent  than  he  looked, 
attaching,  as  he  well  might,  great  importance  to  his  ora- 
torical powers.  The  one  far  more  revolutionary  and  reck- 
less than  he  seemed :  the  other  much  less  revolutionary  and 
reckless  than  he  appeared;  both  highly  cultivated  and 
well-read  University  men  of  letters,  very  different  indeed 
from  the  ordinary  conception  of  Socialist  agitators. 

In  fact,  they  were  two  excellent  specimens  of  those  who 
have  done  the  greater  part  of  the  really  arduous  work  of 
Socialism  in  every  country.  That  work  has  been  done  not 
by  the  artisans  and  labourers  themselves,  but  by  the  highly 
educated  men  of  the  class  above.  This  in  every  case. 
Joffrin,  Bracke,  Debs,  Anseele,  Quelch,  Williams,  and  the 
veteran  August  Bebel  have  been  quite  the  exceptions,  and 
even  they,  all  put  together,  have  not  developed  the  orig- 
inality that  might  be  expected  from  a  rising  class.  That, 


WILHELM  LIEBKNECHT  AND  JEAN  JAURES  397 

as  Marx  said,  the  emancipation  of  the  workers  must  be 
brought  about  by  the  workers  themselves  is  true  in  the 
sense  that  we  cannot  have  Socialism  without  Socialists,  any 
more  than  we  can  achieve  and  carry  on  a  Republic  without 
Republicans.  But  a  slave  class  cannot  be  freed  by  the 
slaves  themselves.  The  leadership,  the  initiative,  the 
teaching,  the  organisation,  must  come  from  those  who  are 
born  into  a  different  position,  and  are  trained  to  use  their 
faculties  in  early  life.  So  far,  several  of  the  more  energetic 
of  the  working  class,  when  they  have  obtained  their  educa- 
tion from  the  well-to-do  Socialists  who  have  been  sacrific- 
ing themselves  for  their  sake,  have  hastened  to  sell  out  to 
the  dominant  minority,  and  most  of  the  workers,  in  Great 
Britain,  at  any  rate,  have  applauded  their  sagacity,  and 
have  voted  for  the  successful  turncoats  at  the  polls. 

Of  the  two  men  I  am  speaking  of,  Liebknecht,  beyond 
all  question,  had  the  harder  life  and  the  less  encouraging 
task.  He  spoke  to  me  with  some  bitterness  of  the  manner 
in  which  he  was  grudged  the  small  salary  paid  him  for  the 
heavy  work  of  editing  the  Vorwdrts  and  carrying  on  the 
most  exhausting  toil  of  platform  agitation  at  the  same 
time,  and  the  petty  detraction  to  which  he  was  subjected. 
He  adjured  me,  no  matter  how  harassing  my  private  affairs 
might  be,  never,  under  any  circumstances,  to  put  myself 
under  obligations  to  the  party.  And  Liebknecht  had  a 
family  dependent  upon  his  ill-requited  labours,  and  could 
easily  have  taken  a  high  position  in  the  State  had  he  chosen 
to  give  up  his  party. 

This  last  observation  applies  also  to  Jaures,  but  he  has 
never  at  any  time  had  to  undergo,  luckily  for  him,  the 
privation  which  usually  falls  to  the  lot  of  pioneers,  and 
which  the  men  who  made  the  movement  in  France  had  to 
undergo  before  he  found  it  already  vigorous  and  strong. 
This  is  said  in  no  reproach  to  Jaures,  who  certainly  cannot 
be  blamed  for  what  has  been  his  good  fortune  due  to  the 


398  THE  RECORD   OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

date  of  his  birth;  but  the  difference  between  the  layer  of 
the  foundations  and  the  builder  of  the  stories  above  the 
ground  floor  is  very  marked.  The  Guesdists  and  the  Blan- 
quists  and  the  Possibilists  had  dug  out  the  basement  and 
put  in  the  supports  with  the  greatest  effort  and  at  heavy 
risk  long  before  Jaures  and  his  fellow-Parliament-men  came 
to  the  front.  Liebknecht,  on  the  other  hand,  bore  through- 
out his  long  and  laborious  life  the  burden  and  heat  of  the 
day. 

Such  were  the  two  eminent  Socialists  who  came  to  stay 
with  us  in  Queen  Anne's  Gate.  A  typical  educated  German 
of  the  North,  a  brilliant  French  professor  of  literature  from 
the  South.  The  contrast  was  marked  in  physique,  as  in 
mind  and  disposition:  Liebknecht  with  spare  frame  and 
long  thoughtful  countenance;  Jaures  strongly  inclined  to 
stoutness  and  with  a  jubilant  and  humorous  visage.  Lieb- 
knecht, a  master  of  several  languages  for  the  purpose  of 
conversation;  Jaures  knowing  no  tongue  familiarly  but 
his  own.  Liebknecht  the  deliberate,  convinced  enthusiast, 
consciously  influencing  others  and  but  rarely  influenced  by 
them;  Jaures  influencing  others  almost  unconsciously,  but 
affected  to  a  much  greater  extent  than  the  great  German 
leader  by  the  opinions  of  those  around  him.  Liebknecht, 
in  short,  the  student,  thinker,  philosopher,  man  of  affairs; 
Jaures  the  orator,  the  man  of  impulse,  the  inspired  pro- 
fessor whom  circumstances  had  drawn  into  politics.  All 
who  knew  them  would  think  of  Liebknecht  as  the  man  of 
the  Council  Chamber :  of  Jaures  as  the  hero  of  the  platform 
and  the  House  of  Assembly. 

In  the  latter  capacity  no  speaker  of  our  day  in  any  coun- 
try has  produced  such  great  effects,  or  has  been  so  ready 
to  produce  them,  as  Jaures.  The  French  deputies  listen  to 
him  as  if  hypnotised,  though  the  majority  of  them  are 
generally  at  variance  with  the  opinions  he  expresses.  Hour 
after  hour  his  cultured  and  well-chosen  periods  roll  on, 


WILHELM  LIEBKNECHT  AND  JEAN  JAURES         399 

broken  now  and  then  by  storms  of  passion,  quieting  down 
at  times  into  the  charm  of  literary  discourse.  Too  wordy 
for  the  matter  to  suit  the  taste  of  the  critical  Anglo-Saxon, 
but  so  admirably  phrased  in  French  that  highly  educated 
men  and  women  of  the  opposite  side  in  politics  crowd  the 
Assembly  to  hear  him  speak,  as  they  might  go  to  listen  to 
Bernhardt's  exquisite  intonation  and  elocution  in  her 
prime.  More  than  once  he  has  held  his  entire  political 
audience,  friends  and  enemies  alike,  entranced  by  some 
marvellously  brilliant  passage  dealing  with  science  and  art 
and  literature  and  music,  in  their  relation  to  the  social  and 
economic  life  of  the  time.  On  such  occasions  not  a  sound 
can  be  heard  in  all  that  large  hall  where  the  French  deputies 
sit.  Perfect  silence  reigns  throughout,  broken  at  the  end 
only  by  rapturous  applause  from  all  the  benches.  His 
hearers  recognise  only  at  such  a  moment  that  they  have 
been  listening  to  lofty  sentiments  expressed  in  beautiful 
language,  and  they  regard  Jaures  the  orator,  regardless  of 
his  political  and  social  heresies,  as  an  honour  to  the  country 
of  their  birth. 

It  would  be  absolutely  impossible  for  an  English  speaker, 
no  matter  how  powerful  he  might  be,  to  hold  the  House  of 
Commons  in  this  way  on  any  subject  not  immediately 
connected  with  the  matter  in  hand,  unless  indeed  he  had 
something  very  interesting  to  say  on  racing  or  football, 
golf  or  cricket.  The  "tone  of  the  House"  in  London  is 
indeed  in  this  respect  as  low  as  it  can  be.  Any  style  which 
rises  above  the  level  of  conversational  twaddle  is  regarded 
as  quite  out  of  place.  But  with  all  Jaures's  great  elo- 
quence he  could  not,  at  any  period  of  his  career,  have 
delivered  in  the  French  Assembly,  when  challenged,  on  the 
spur  of  the  moment,  such  a  masterly  exposition  of  our 
views,  theories  and  proposals  as  Jules  Guesde  gave  under 
those  circumstances:  a  speech  which  reported  verbatim  is 
one  of  the  best  pamphlets  of  the  International  Socialist 


400  THE  RECORD    OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

party  to-day.  To  say  the  truth  I  have  never  considered 
Jaures's  knowledge  of  economics  and  sociology  at  all  on  a 
level  with  his  other  acquirements.  On  the  other  hand, 
his  power  of  work  is  so  colossal  that  quite  probably  he  will 
one  day  astonish  us  all  with  some  wonderful  tour  de  force  on 
these  subjects. 

I  once  had  the  misfortune,  it  was  no  less,  to  speak  after 
Jaures  in  French.  This  was  at  Brussels  in  the  great  Hall 
of  the  Maison  du  People.  The  place  was  packed  with  fully 
10,000  people,  and  after  one  of  Jaures's  spirit-stirring 
orations,  his  fine  voice  ringing  through  the  building  like  a 
trumpet,  he  sat  down  amid  a  perfect  tempest  of  applause, 
the  audience  being  worked  up  to  the  highest  pitch  of  excite- 
ment. The  chairman,  Emile  Vandervelde,  when  the  cheers 
had  subsided,  called  upon  —  me  !  I  was  never  so  taken 
aback  in  all  my  life.  To  have  to  address  that  tremendous 
audience  in  French,  after  the  ablest  orator  in  that  language, 
was  a  task  that  it  was  far  too  bad  of  Vandervelde  to  set  me. 
However,  there  was  no  time  to  reflect  or  to  hesitate,  so  I 
did  my  best  to  fight  for  time.  I  told  the  Belgians  they 
had  no  doubt  heard  of  English  "  phlegm,'7  and  I  was  happy 
to  say  I  had  come  there  provided  with  a  good  personal 
supply  of  that  insular  commodity,  without  which  I  certainly 
should  not  have  dared  to  rise  to  address  them  after  such  a 
speech  as  that  which  they  had  just  heard.  And  so,  with  a 
little  more  chaff  of  similar  character,  I  contrived  to  get  out 
in  silence  what  I  had  to  say.  But  no  more  of  that  for  me. 

Liebknecht  and  Jaures  took  diametrically  opposite  views 
about  Dreyfus.  Jaures,  of  course,  was  one  of  the  most 
prominent  agitators  on  the  side  of  that  unfortunate  Jew  - 
Dreyfusard,  as  the  phrase  then  went,  to  the  backbone. 
Liebknecht  was  the  most  convinced,  not  to  say  obstinate, 
anti-Drey fusard  I  ever  met.  So  my  wife  and  I  felt  not  a 
little  bit  anxious  at  what  might  happen  when  two  such 
able  and  determined  men,  wholly  at  variance  on  the  ques- 


WILHELM  LIEBKNECHT  AND  JEAN  JAURES  401 

tion  of  the  day,  were  to  be  thrown  together  continuously. 
We  need  not  have  been  troubled.  Liebknecht's  cool  and 
pleasant  manner,  Jaures's  admirable  good  nature  and  good 
fellowship  met  every  difficulty  with  ease ;  though  the  burn- 
ing subject  was  frequently  discussed  between  them,  and 
had  a  curious  habit,  as  such  subjects  have,  of  coming  up  at 
the  most  unexpected  times. 

Was  Dreyfus  a  German  spy  or  was  he  not?  I  agreed 
with  Jaures  that  he  was  not,  and,  whether  he  was  or  not, 
we  argued  that  he  had  been  most  unfairly  condemned  and 
tortured  because  he  was  a  Jew,  because  he  devoted  himself 
to  his  profession,  because  he  was  very  clever,  and  because 
above  all  he  stood  in  the  way  of  the  political  intrigues  of 
the  clerical  military  staff.  Besides,  he  was  a  rich  man, 
and  there  was  no  earthly  reason  why  he  should  have  been  a 

spy- 

This  is  not  the  place  to  go  all  over  the  Dreyfus  case 
again,  but  it  is  perhaps  worth  while  to  put  the  other  side 
as  Liebknecht  put  it.  "I  have  been  in  prison  during  the 
whole  of  the  time  the  trial  has  been  going  on  at  Rennes," 
he  told  Jaures  in  French,  "and  I  have  read  every  word  of 
the  verbatim  report  in  the  Temps  day  by  day  as  it  appeared. 
I  have  not  missed  a  word.  I  have  no  prejudice  whatever 
against  Jews  of  any  kind.  Some  of  my  dearest  friends 
have  been  Jews,  and  some  of  the  men  I  most  admire  were 
Jews.  Lassalle  was  a  Jew,  Heine  was  a  Jew,  Marx  was  a 
Jew,  Kautsky  is  a  Jew,  Bernstein  is  a  Jew,  Singer  is  a  Jew. 
I  knew  them,  and  have  worked  in  the  closest  possible  inti- 
macy with  all  of  them.  Moreover,  I  am  not  a  man  to  hold 
to  an  opinion  because  I  have  once  formed  it,  if  I  see  reason 
to  change.  But  the  more  I  read  of  this  Dreyfus  business 
the  more  satisfied  I  became  that  he  was  a  spy."  He  gave 
many  reasons  for  this  decision.  And  then  he  added,  "You 
may  believe  me  implicitly  when  I  tell  you  that  there  is  a 
secret  but  loyal  understanding  between  all  civilised  govern- 

2D 


402     THE  RECORD  OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

merits  to  the  effect  that  if  an  innocent  man  is  by  accident 
arrested  as  a  spy,  a  notification  is  at  once  sent  to  that 
effect.  I  know  positively,  and  as  a  matter  of  fact,  that  the 
German  Government  sent  no  such  notification  in  Dreyfus's 
case.  Why?  Because  they  could  not  do  so.  He  may 
have  been  playing  a  double  game,  and  leading  the  German 
Government  on  for  purely  patriotic  purposes.  I  know 
nothing  about  that.  It  is  a  very  difficult  thing  to  prove, 
as  you  must  see.  But  that  he  did  give  secret  information 
away  I  have  no  doubt  whatever." 

Neither  Jaures  nor  myself  was  shaken  at  the  time.  But 
since  then  I  have  become  not  so  sure  as  I  was  at  the  moment 
that  Liebknecht  was  wrong.  First,  how  is  it  that  all  Drey- 
fus's  most  earnest  supporters,  including  his  brave  counsel 
M.  Labori,  have  cut  him?  Secondly,  how  did  it  happen 
that  nearly  all  those  who  went  to  Rennes  from  England 
strongly  prejudiced  in  Dreyfus's  favour  came  back  more  or 
less  against  him.  One  old  friend  of  mine,  an  officer  of  dis- 
tinction, who  was  quite  certain  of  his  innocence  when  he 
left  for  Rennes  told  me,  "All.  I  can  say  is,  Hyndman,  the 
impression  the  man  produced  upon  me  was  that  if  he  was 
not  a  spy,  it  was  not  for  want  of  a  natural  turn  that  way." 

But  our  conversations  during  that,  to  me,  interesting 
time,  covered  a  very  much  wider  field  than  the  Dreyfus 
question,  wide  as  that  was,  with  all  its  innumerable  com- 
plications and  side  issues.  The  relations  between  Germany 
and  France,  between  France  and  England,  —  then  by  ho 
means  so  happy  as  they  are  now,  —  between  Germany  and 
England,  the  Colonial  system  and  the  changes  coming  in 
Eastern  Europe  and  in  Asia  were  all  discussed,  while  Lieb- 
knecht gave  us  most  interesting  accounts  of  the  old  men  of 
the  movement,  from  the  days  of  1848  onwards. 

One  thing  I  noticed  then  and  recall  vividly  now.  Lieb- 
knecht was  much  more  afraid  of  the  German  Government, 
and  much  more  opposed  to  its  external  policy  than  was 


WILHELM  LIEBKNECHT  AND  JEAN  JAURES          403 

Jaures.  He  knew  Prussian  policy  and  Hohenzollern  am- 
bitions too  well  to  be  hopeful.  He  saw  pan-Germanism 
and  unscrupulous  militarism  coming  to  the  front  to  an 
extent  which  Jaures  then  and  always  failed  to  appreciate. 
I  remember  well  his  saying,  "  Strange  as  it  may  seem  to 
you,  Germany  as  a  whole  has  not  long  recovered  from  the 
Thirty  Years7  War.  She  is  now  getting  proud  of  her  grow- 
ing strength  which,  since  the  war  against  France,  has  been 
turned  into  an  industrial,  prior  to  developing  in  a  military, 
direction.  With  the  exception  of  us  Social  Democrats, 
Germany  to-day  is  a  Germany  of  war  not  of  peace,  and  un- 
less we  make  way  very  rapidly  you  may  live  to  see  some 
extraordinary  changes."  I  do  not  say  that  Liebknecht  fore- 
saw what  has  since  occurred,  or  that  he  anticipated  the 
direct  challenge  to  British  naval  power  which  has  now 
been  thrown  down;  but  he  certainly  took  a  much  less 
favourable  view  of  Germany  as  an  influence  in  favour  of 
peace  than  it  was  then  the  fashion  to  take  in  our  political 
circles. 

Liebknecht  was  an  old  man  when  he  died  in  harness, 
from  sheer  overwork  which  he  ought  not  to  have  under- 
taken. He  sent  me  his  framed  photograph  signed  shortly 
before  his  death,  which  I  shall  ever  cherish  as  a  memento  of 
a  noble  character  who  devoted  his  great  abilities  through- 
out his  life  to  the  service  of  mankind.  Jaures,  happily,  is 
still  with  us,  and  though  I  not  unfrequently  differ  much 
from  his  policy  —  and  cannot  for  the  life  of  me  comprehend 
his  pro-Germanism,  his  support  of  the  English  Capitalist 
Liberal  Party,  or  his  defence  of  sabotage  —  I  shall  never 
cease  to  respect  and  admire  his  indefatigable  work  in  our 
cause.  It  has  been  one  of  the  great  privileges  of  my  long 
life  to  have  enjoyed  the  intimate  friendship  of  two  such 
men. 


CHAPTER  XXVIII 

THE  INTERNATIONAL  CONGRESS  OF  1889 

rilHE  year  1889,  the  centenary  of  the  commencement  of  the 
A  French  Revolution,  a  date  which  some  of  us  had  hoped 
might  be  signalised  by  an  organised  declaration  against 
capitalism  in  every  European  metropolis,  saw  only  a  divided 
International  Congress  in  Paris.  The  French  Socialists 
themselves  were  so  thoroughly  at  loggerheads  that  their 
two  sections,  the  Guesdists  and  the  Possibilists,  the  one 
side  led  by  Jules  Guesde,  the  devoted  and  thoroughgoing 
advocate  of  out-and-out  revolutionary  Socialism,  the  other 
by  Dr.  Paul  Brousse,  the  equally  persistent  champion  of 
immediate  practical  reforms,  could  not  meet  in  one  hall 
without  the  certainty  of  bloodshed,  or  at  any  rate  of  severe 
contusions,  following.  A  spirit  of  fraternity  so  marked  by 
brotherly  hatred  had  about  it  something  of  the  ludicrous. 
But  we  Socialists  when  we  mean  business  are  not  keen  to 
note  any  humorous  touch  in  our  own  proceedings.  So  we 
solemnly  held  our  International  Socialist  Congress  to  bring 
about  the  unity  of  the  workers  of  the  world  — ' i  Workers 
of  the  world  unite,  you  have  nothing  to  lose  but  your  chains," 
are  the  concluding  words  of  the  Communist  Manifesto  —  in 
two  separate  halls  purposely  chosen  at  some  distance  from 
one  another  in  order  to  avoid  the  possible  consequences  of 
fraternal  greetings. 

I  thought  it  all  excruciatingly  funny;  but  it  did  not 
become  me  to  say  so  or  to  look  so.  Wherefore,  being 
myself  a  part  of  the  grandiose  make-believe,  I  composed 
my  countenance  and  adjusted  my  beard  to  the  gravity  of 

404 


THE  INTERNATIONAL  CONGRESS  OF   1889  405 

the  occasion.  But  we  of  the  Social  Democratic  Federation 
who  alone  then  represented  Socialism  in  Great  Britain, 
were  in  the  company  of  the  Possibilists  in  the  Rue  Lancry, 
and  not  with  the  Guesdists  in  the  Rue  Rochechouart.  This 
was  regarded  by  our  Guesdist  friends  as  downright  abnega- 
tion of  the  true  faith  as  it  is  in  Marx ;  for  it  was  well  known 
that  we  held  by  that  economic  saviour  of  society,  and  our 
place  should  have  been  with  the  fanatical  propagandists  of 
the  pure  doctrine.  Faction  feeling  ran  very  high.  I  shall 
never  forget  our  lamented  comrade  Costa,  who  afterwards 
himself  became  Possibilist  enough  to  accept  the  appointment 
of  Vice-Chairman  of  the  Italian  National  Assembly,  meet- 
ing me  by  chance  on  the  Boulevards,  and  finding  that  the 
French  language  did  not  adequately  express  his  Socialist 
sentiments  towards  me,  denouncing  me  at  the  top  of  his 
voice,  in  the  choicest  Italian,  as  a  renegade  and  a  betrayer. 
He  collected  a  crowd,  but,  I  rejoice  to  recall,  did  not  upset 
my  temper,  and  we  parted  in  comparative  peace  to  meet 
on  excellent  terms  at  a  later  date. 

I  still  believe  we  did  right  to  join  with  our  friends  of  the 
Paris  Municipal  Council  who  were  doing  excellent  work; 
though  I  should  be  the  last  to  deny  that  Guesde,  Lafargue, 
and  their  friends  have  done  splendid  service  to  the  cause  by 
upholding  the  red  flag  of  revolutionary  Socialism  on  all 
occasions.  Even  as  it  was,  the  International  Congresses  of 
1889  made  a  new  and  hopeful  departure ;  and  they  certainly 
ought  to  have  done  so  in  justice  to  the  assembled  delegates. 
For  the  weather,  it  was  the  month  of  August,  was  broiling 
hot,  and  a  few  anarchists  who  got  in  among  us,  Dr.  Merlino 
for  one,  did  not  tend  to  reduce  the  temperature.  I  can 
stand  as  much  of  disputation  and  oratory  as  most  men; 
but  on  this  occasion  I  am  ready  to  admit  that  rhetoric  and 
the  thermometer  together  overcame  me,  and  I  was  heartily 
glad  when,  after  a  week  of  it,  we  raised  our  last  cheers  for 
the  Social  Revolution,  and  went  off  to  sup  in  peace.  We 


406     THE  RECORD  OF  AN  ADVENTUROUS  LIFE 

have  made  enormous  progress  everywhere  since  then,  and, 
great  differences  as  there  still  may  be  between  French 
Socialists,  they  are  nowadays  a  unified  party,  and  can 
discuss  important  questions  vigorously  and  even  bitterly 
without  any  breaking  away. 

And  so  I  come  within  twenty  years  of  the  present  time 
—  years  of  which  I  may  some  day  try  to  render  an  account. 
For  the  moment  I  shall  content  myself  with  saying  that  it  is 
rarely  given  to  any  one  to  be  so  fortunate  as  to  witness 
within  his  own  lifetime  such  a  great  and  general  advance 
towards  the  realisation  of  what  he  has  striven  for  as  that 
which  I  can  look  round  me  and  see  to-day.  Thirty  years 
is  a  long  period  in  the  life  of  a  man:  it  is  nothing  in  the 
life  of  this  nation.  And  I  can  still  hope  that,  when  I  have 
finished  my  little  share  of  pioneer  work,  and  have  passed 
over  to  the  majority,  England  may  lead  the  world  in  the 
constitution  of  a  Co-operative  Commonwealth. 

There  can  be  no  doubt  that  what  I  wrote  in  1881  is,  if 
that  be  possible,  even  more  true  to-day  than  it  was  then. 
Great  Britain  is  the  country  of  all  countries  in  the  world 
where  the  ideals  of  scientific  Socialism  can  be  realised  more 
peacefully  and  more  speedily  than  anywhere  else.  Only 
ignorance,  and  consequent  lack  of  comprehension  and  initia- 
tive, on  the  part  of  the  wage-earners  of  every  grade,  pre- 
vents us  from  at  once  entering  in  earnest  upon  the  period 
of  Collectivist  and  Socialist  transformation.  The  economic 
forms  are  ready  on  every  hand  for  the  complete  social 
revolution  to  the  benefit  of  all.  Not  only  the  Government 
departments,  the  Government  being  to-day  by  far  the 
largest  employer  of  labour,  and  the  cities  and  towns  with 
their  municipalised  ownerships,  but  the  railways,  mines, 
trustified  factories,  warehouses,  banks,  stores,  and  the  like, 
have  reached  the  collectivist,  non-competitive  stage  under 
capitalism  which,  to  all  who  are  not  actually  determined 
not  to  see,  show  that,  whether  we  like  it  or  not,  we  are  on 


THE   INTERNATIONAL  CONGRESS   OF  1889  407 

the  very  threshold  of  Socialism.     The  problem  of  the  land 
itself  can  only  be  solved  by  the  socialisation  of  capital. 

This  it  is  which  makes  me  more  convinced  than  ever 
that  compromise  is  not  only  unnecessary  for  Socialists  but 
is  in  every  respect  harmful.  It  strengthens  the  power  of 
resistance  in  the  decaying  elements  of  society,  while  it 
blights  the  enthusiasm  and  enfeebles  the  determination  of 
the  co-ordinating  forces  growing  up  from  below.  It  is  the 
conception  of  what  shall  be  that  breathes  life  into  what  is. 
The  mere  machinery  of  politics  is  useless  without  the  force- 
ful energy  of  intelligent  idealism  to  provide  the  motive 
power.  Not  being  in  control  of  the  social  elements  of 
wealth-production  ourselves  we  cannot  reason  as  if  we 
were  emperors  or  administrators  partially  possessed  of  the 
power  to  reorder  affairs  by  endeavouring  to  harmonise  all 
conflicting  interests.  Under  such  circumstances  a  small 
minority  which  understands  has  for  its  sole  duty  the  leaven- 
ing of  the  vast  mass  of  those  who  are  still  incapable  of 
apprehending  the  facts  around  them.  The  reproach  of 
sectarianism  carries  with  it  no  odium  for  us.  Truth  must 
ever  be  sectarian:  error  alone  can  afford  to  be  catholic. 
The  experience  of  more  than  thirty  years  of  agitation  has 
taught  me  that  only  those  who  have  grasped  the  complete 
economic  and  historic  facts  of  social  evolution  can  be  relied 
upon  to  judge  of  the  situation  at  any  given  moment,  or  are 
able  to  take  advantage  of  the  great  changes  which,  uncon- 
sciously for  the  many,  the  development  of  human  society 
has  brought  about. 


INDEX 


Abbott,  W.,  11 

Abbott,  Edward,  13 

Abyssinia,  war  in,  183-184 

Acland,  A.  H.  D.,  deputation 
to,  re  feeding  of  necessitous 
children,  277. 

!'A11  for  the  Cause,"  by  William 
Morris,  published  in  Justice, 
311,  327-328 

America.     (See  United  States) 

Anarchism  and  Liberalism,  simi- 
larity of  sentiment  and  meth- 
od, 243 

Anstruther,  Sir  Robert,  Tory  can- 
didature for  Fifeshire,  85,  88 

Antonelli,  Cardinal,  25 

Arabi  Pasha,  204 

Argus,  The,  connection  with,  96- 
100 

Aspinall,  Mr.,  Duke  of  Edin- 
burgh's kindness  to,  101-102 

Assassination,  various  views  of, 
62-63 

Australia,  journey  to,  life  in,  etc., 
89-96,  100-103;  land  system, 
93-96 ;  education  problem,  98- 
101;  Chinese  in,  105-107; 
cattle  ranching  and  farming, 
111-112;  emigration,  111-112; 
climate,  112;  Australian  Bush, 
112-113.  (See  also  Argus, 
names  of  places,  etc.) 

Austria  —  Austrian  officers'  friend- 
ship for  Italy,  41 ;  excellence 
of  military  bands,  41-42. 

Aveling,  Dr.  Edward,  connection 
with  Democratic  Federation, 
etc.,  262,  319,  330,  333,  388, 
389 


Badger,  Dr.,  356 

Baillie,  Mrs.  Gordon,  280-281 


Balfour,  A.  J.,  374 

"Bankruptcy  of  India,"  published 
in  Nineteenth  Century,  160- 
161. 

Bass,  Hamar,  11 

Bax,  Belfort,  socialist  principles, 
206 ;  party  split  in  Democratic 
Federation  and  reconciliation, 
330,  333 

Baynes,  Professor  Spencer,  87 

Beacon sfield,  Lord.     (See  Disraeli) 

Beale,  Samuel,  383. 

Bebel,  August,  ability  and  work 
of,  391,  392-394 

Beesly,  Professor,  226,  250,  310 

Bell,  Major  Evans,  159 

Benedek,  Marshal,  part  taken  in 
Italian  War  of  1866,  37,  40 

Benjamin,  Judah  P.,  22 

Bennett,  Samuel,  204 

Berars  Provinces,  question  of  res- 
toration to  Hyderabad,  155-158 

Bernard,  Dr.,  incident  concerning, 
63 

Besant,  Annie,  member  of  Demo- 
cratic Federation,  312 

Bismarck,  Prince,  Franco-German 
War,  142,  148;  political  en- 
counter with  Disraeli,  214-216 ; 
study  of  political  economy,  215 

Blackley,  Rev.  Lewery,  scheme 
of  compulsory  insurance,  278- 
279 

Blaine,  James,  196 

Blair,  Mrs.  Montgomery,  181 

Bland,  Mr.  and  Mrs.,  271,  307 

"Bloody  Sunday"  in  Trafalgar 
Square,  296,  367 

Blunt,  Wilfred  Scawen,  204 

Booth,  Charles,  commission  of  in- 
quiry into  condition  of  London 
poor,  304-305 


409 


410 


INDEX 


Borlase,  W.  C.,  209 

Boulanger,  General,  career  and 
fate  of,  291-292 

Brackenbury,  Col.  C.  B.,  at  Venice, 
42 

Bradlaugh,  Charles,  secularist  doc- 
trines of,  opposition  to  Social- 
ism, etc.,  309-310;  debates  at 
St.  James's  Hall,  309,  310-312 

BrSheret,  Pere,  127-128 

Briand,  Aristide,  character  and 
career  of,  243-244 ;  in  Clemen- 
ceau's  cabinet,  300 

Bright,  John,  11 

British  Guiana,  Hyndman  con- 
nection with,  3-5 

Brousse,  Dr.  Paul,  free  meals  and 
clothing  for  poor  children,  276 ; 
re  General  Boulanger,  291 ; 
Socialism  in  France,  298-299; 
leader  of  the  Possibilists,  404 

Bullock-Hall,  war  correspondent  to 
Italian  War  1866,  30;  part 
taken  in  Monte  Suello  fight, 
33 

Burke,  T.  H.,  assassination  of, 
238-239 

Burnand,  Sir  F.  C.,  69 

Burns,  John,  imprisonment  of,  296, 
367 ;  early  training  in  connec- 
tion with  Democratic  Federa- 
tion, 338-339;  debate  with 
Quelch,  339-340 ;  various  inci- 
dents at  meetings,  etc.,  340- 
344;  stump  oratory,  work, 
etc.,  339,  342-343;  part  taken 
in  the  "West  End  Riots," 
367-373 

Burrows,  Herbert,  foundation  of 
Democratic  Federation,  226, 
227. 

Burton,  Sir  Richard,  character- 
istics and  career,  151,  355-356 

Butler-Johnstone,  Russo-Turkish 
War,  opinions,  etc.,  concern- 
ing, 190-191 ;  friendship  with, 
191 ;  opinion  of  Disraeli,  208 ; 
foundation  of  Democratic  Fed- 
eration, 226 ;  acquaintance 
with  Marx,  257 

Buxton,  E.  N.,  10 


Byrne,  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Frank,  part 
taken  re  Phoenix  Park  assassi- 
nations, 238-239 

Cambridge,  Pickard,  384 

Cambridge  Union,  socialistic  reso- 
lution proposed,  326 

Candler,  Dr.,  91 

Capital,  by  Marx,  Study  of,  192 

"Capital  Punishment,"  views  on, 
4&-51 

Carey,  J.,  Irish  informer,  240 

Carlyle,  Thomas,  quoted  re  Mr. 
Gladstone,  149 

Carnegie,  Andrew,  Homestead  fight, 
194 

Carpenter,  Edward,  member  of 
Democratic  Federation,  271 ; 
supply  of  funds  for  Justice, 
306 

Carruthers,  J.  K.,  206 

Cattle  ranching  and  farming  in 
Australia,  111 

Cave,  Mr.  Justice,  "West  End 
Riots  "case,  371-372 

Cavendish,  Lord  Frederick,  as- 
sassination of,  238-239 

Cavour,  Count,  character,  policy, 
etc.,  58-60;  relations  with 
Mazzini,  59-60 

Cernatony,  57 

Chamberlain,  Austen,  352 

Chamberlain,  Joseph,  coercion 
methods  in  Ireland,  237 ;  char- 
acteristic incidents  regarding, 
350-353 

Champion,  H.  H.,  character  and 
career,  280-283;  on  staff  of 
Justice,  307;  out-door  speak- 
ing, 316;  early  training  of 
John  Burns,  339;  desertion 
of  Democratic  Federation,  342 ; 
part  taken  in  "West  End 
Riots,"  368-373 

China,  possible  future  policy  as  to 
India,  162;  Chinese  in  Aus- 
tralia, 106-107 

Churchill,  Lord  Randolph,  amongst 
audience  at  open-air  meetings, 
317 ;  sudden  rise  to  power  and 
fame,  374-375;  ability,  per- 


INDEX 


411 


sonality,  etc.,  3 '5-378;  so- 
cialistic tendencies,  375-376, 
377-379 ;  resignation,  379 ;  in- 
cident concerning  interview 
with  Holkar  in  visit  to  India, 
379-380 

Clark,  Dr.  G.  B.,  266,  230 

Clark,  W.  G.,  17 

Clarke,  Marcus,  author  of  His 
Natural  Life,  97-98 

Clemenceau,  Georges,  character  and 
career,  288-291,  293-295,  299- 
302  ;  Editor  of  La  Justice,  288, 
289 ;  ability  as  journalist,  289, 
301 ;  various  distinguishing 
qualities,  289,  290 ;  his  appear- 
ance, 290 ;  practical  joking,  290- 
291;  interview  with,  293-296; 
French  land  nationalisation, 
294-295,  298 ;  loss  of  constitu- 
ency, 295;  opinion  of  English 
working  class,  300 ;  part  taken 
in  Dreyfus  affair,  301-302 

Colac  Lake,  Australia,  92 

Colonies,  relations  with  Mother- 
country,  88-89 

Commonweal,  The,  330,  331,  338 

Commune  for  London,  A,  Pamphlet 
re  London  Municipal  Govern- 
ment, 383 

Commune  in  Paris,  142-148,  205; 
commemoration  of,  318 

Communist  Club,  205 

Communist  Manifesto  of  1847,  by 
Marx  and  Engels,  205 

Compensation  for  Disturbance  Bill, 
Ireland,  203 

Comstock  Mines  "Boom,"  171 

Connaught,  Duke  of,  385 

Conservative  party,  Indian  Gov- 
ernment reform,  support  of 
new  policy  in  1880,  162-164; 
methods  of,  269-270 

Constans,  M.,  292 

Corvisart,  Dr.,  198-199 

Costa,  Andrea,  405 

Courier,  Paul  Louis,  284 

Cowen,  Joseph,  story  of  a  mob,  63 ; 
incident  re  Gladstone,  186-187 ; 
foundation  of  Democratic  Fed- 
eration, 226 


Cranbrook,  Lord,  support  of  Indian 
reform  policy  in  1880,  163 

Crane,  Walter,  335 

Crawford,  Marion,  description  of 
Rome  in  Saracinesca,  26 

Cremer,  Sir  Randall,  252 

Cricket  and  cricketers  fifty  years 
ago,  19-21 

Cross,  Lord,  375 

Curtis,  George  William,  195 

D'Albiac,  Mrs.,  8 

Dalley,  W.  B.,  109 

Dalling,  Lord,  186 

Danvers,  Sir  Juland,  161 

Davidson,  Mr.,  musical  critic  to 
the  Times,  188 

Davidson,  Morrison,  204,  226 

Davitt,  Michael,  re  Hyndman  an- 
cestry, 2;  foundation  of  Land 
League,  234 ;  chairman  of  Mr. 
Stead's  meeting  in  the  Riding 
School,  296;  party  split  in 
Democratic  Federation,  329 

"Dawn  of  a  Revolutionary  Epoch," 
published  in  the  Nineteenth 
Century,  206-207 

De  Cassagnac,  Paul,  289 

Delane,  John,  influence  of  the  editor 
of  the  Times,  148,  183-184; 
Harpending,  Lent,  and  Rhu- 
bery  mining  fraud,  179-180; 
183 

Delescluze,  144 

Democratic  Federation.  (See  Social 
Democratic  Federation) 

Derby,  Lord,  Government  pur- 
chase of  Suez  Canal  shares,  150 

Derby  Day,  79-80 

Devonshire,  Duke  of,  rejection  of 
Indian  Government  reform 
policy,  163-164 

Dilke,  Sir  Charles,  coercion  meth- 
ods in  Ireland,  237;  British 
relations  with  France,  359-360, 
361 ;  London  Municipal  Gov- 
ernment, 383 

Disraeli,  Benjamin,  character  and 
ability,  208-209,  212,  213-214, 
216,  224-225;  influence  over 
men,  213;  appearance,  209, 


412 


INDEX 


211,  219;  political  career,  etc., 
190-191,  208-209,  211-212, 
214,  224 ;  Government  purchase 
of  Suez  Canal  shares,  150; 
election  satire  on,  by  Professor 
Thorold  Rogers,  209-211;  lit- 
erary work,  212-213;  politi- 
cal relations  with  Bismarck, 
214-216;  interview  with,  217- 
225;  various  opinions  of,  213- 
214,  358;  illness  and  death, 
224 

Dock  strike,  341 

Dod  Street  demonstration,  387 

Dreyfus  affair,  part  taken  by 
Clemenceau,  etc.,  301-302 ; 
Liebknecht's  and  Jaures's  opin- 
ions on,  400-402 

Drummond,  Maurice  and  Francis, 
literary  contributors  to  Pall 
Mall  Gazette,  148 

Dumaresq,  Mr.,  110 

Duruy,  Professor  Victor,  his  inter- 
view with  Napoleon  III.,  198- 
200 

Dyer,  James,  126-127 

Eastern  Question,  Gladstone's  pol- 
icy, etc.,  184-185;  Marx's 
opinion,  351-352.  (See  also 
Russo-Turkish  War) 

Economics  of  Socialism,  Professor 
York  Powell's  eulogy  of,  285 
(note) 

Edinburgh,  H.R.H.  The  Duke  of, 
stay  in  Australia,  character, 
acquaintance  with,  etc.,  101- 
102 

Education,  part  taken  in  establish- 
ing unsectarian  education  in 
Australia,  98-101 

Edwards,  Major,  233 

Elections,  Scotch,  election  at  St. 
Andrews,  87 ;  English  system 
of  parliamentary  elections,  88; 
American  Presidential  election, 
200-202;  General  Election  of 
1880,  cause  leading  up  to,  etc., 
184,  188 

Elphinstone,  Mountstuart,  159 

Engels,    Friedrich,    attack    on    the 


Democratic  Federation,  etc., 
230-232 ;  treatment  of  Adolphe 
Smith,  231-232,  259 ;  manage- 
ment of  the  International, 

252,  262;     Consolidation     of 
Sweitzer  and  Marx  parties,  252, 
263,  393 ;  character,  work,  etc., 

253,  255-256,   391;    influence 
over  Marx,  256 

England  for  All,  composition  and 
publication  of,  228;  quotation 
from,  228-230 ;  cause  of  breach 
with  Marx,  230,  259,  261 ;  read 
by  Lord  Randolph  Churchill, 
377-378 

Erfurt,  Congress  of,  263 

Evans,  Go  wen,  manager  of  the 
Argus,  96,  99 

Evarts,  Mr.,  195,  201. 

Fabian  Society,  formation  of,  283- 
284;  action  re  Socialist  Unity 
scheme,  332-333 

"Fair  Trade  League,"  part  taken 
in  "West  End  Riots,"  367-369 

Faithful,  Rev.  Mr.,  10 

Fawcett,  Henry,  coercion  methods 
in  Ireland,  237 

Fawcett,  Professor,  159-160,  219 

Fenton,  Mr.,  382 

Fiji  Islands,  trip  to,  experiences 
on  the  Coquette,  114-116;  at 
sea  in  a  hurricane,  117-120; 
narrow  escape  from  shipwreck 
on  the  Marion  Rennie,  128-130 ; 
white  men's  rule,  native  charac- 
ter, customs,  etc.,  123-125, 135- 
138 

Finlay  family  at  Glenormiston, 
Australia,  92-94 

Firth,  Mr.,  383 

Fison,  Lorimer,  124 

FitzGerald,  Charles,  306 

FitzGerald,  Maurice  Purcell,  friend- 
ship with,  66,  67;  natural 
abilities,  66;  horse  racing  and 
bad  luck,  66-68;  verses  by, 
quoted,  68-69 ;  at  Seaford,  69 

Florence,  visit  to,  24 

Forbes,  Archibald,  incident  con- 
cerning, 195 


INDEX 


413 


Foreign  Office,  lack  of  important 
information,  instance  of,  359- 
362 

France,  Socialism  and  Land  Na- 
tionalisation in,  293-295,  298- 
299,  328,  397-398 

Franco-German  War,  English  pol- 
icy concerning,  142;  German 
Socialistic  opposition  to,  392- 
393 

Free  meals  for  children,  experi- 
ment in  Paris,  271,  276-277; 
arguments  in  favour  of,  271- 
277;  Mrs.  Hyndman's  organi- 
sation, 272-274 

Frost,  P.  B.,  some  incidents  of  life, 
280-281,  283;  on  staff  of  Jus- 
tice, 307 

Gallifet,  General,  144 

Gambetta,  Leon,  relations  with 
Great  Britain,  cause  of  retire- 
ment, etc.,  359-362 

Garcia,  226 

Garibaldi,  Italian  War  of  1866, 
29-30 ;  wounding  of,  at  Monte 
Suello,  33 ;  interview  with, 
impressions  of,  etc.,  36-37; 
England's  welcome  to,  29- 
30 

Garibaldi,  Menotti,  32 
14        Geddes,    James,    author    of    Logic 
of  Indian  Deficit,  153,  159 

Geldart,  Dr.,  384 

General  Election  of  1880,  causes 
leading  up  to,  etc.,  184,  188 

George,  Henry,  Progress  and  Pov- 
erty, criticism  of,  etc.,  193,  257- 
259,  266;  theories  and  writ- 
ings, 258-259,  266-268 ;  Marx's 
opinion  of,  258-259;  characteris- 
tics, 172,  266-268 

Germany  — 

Liebknecht's     view    of     German 

policy,  402-403 

Socialism  in,  Marx's  views,  260; 
consolidation  and  principles  of 
German  Social  Democracy, 
252,  263-264,  391,  392-394; 
Congress  of  Erfurt,  263;  So- 
cialistic opposition  to  war  with 


France,  392-393;  present  posi- 
tion, 393-395 

Treatment  of  political  prisoners, 
392 

Gibson,  Milner,  11 

Gladstone,  Steuart,  92 

Gladstone,  W.  E.,  character,  policy, 
health,  etc.,  149,  184-187,  208, 
211-212;  rejection  of  Indian 
Government  reform  policy,  163, 
185-186 ;  Eastern  question,  184- 
186 ;  House  of  Lords  veto,  203 ; 
influence  on  House  of  Commons, 
374 

Godbe,  W.  S.,  168 

Golf,  impressions  of,  85 

Goritz,  40 

Gorringe,  Captain,  195,  198 

Gorst,  Sir  John,  acquaintance  with, 
374 ;  opinion  of  Lord  Randolph 
Churchill's  ability,  376 

Goschen,  G.  J.,  his  comment  on 
Historical  Basis  of  Socialism, 
286 

Graham,  Cunninghame,  imprison- 
ment of,  296,  367 

Grant,  Baron,  183 

Grant,  Captain,  151 

Granville,  Lord,  142 

Greenwood,  Frederick,  friendship 
with,  29,  148,  188;  editorship 
of  Pall  Mall  Gazette,  148-149; 
Government  purchase  of  Suez 
Canal  Shares  suggested  by,  149- 
150;  severance  of  connection, 
188 ;  influence  of  Disraeli  upon, 
213;  editorship  of  St.  James's 
Gazette,  304;  anecdote  related 
by,  concerning  Mr.  Chamber- 
lain, 352 

Guesde,  Jules,  famous  speech  on 
socialism,  399-400 ;  Guesdist 
Socialist  party,  404-406 

Gum-tree  forests,  112 

Haddon,  Frederick,  editor  of  the 
Argus,  99 

Haldane,  Mr.,  visit  to  George 
Meredith,  82 

Hamid,  Sultan  Abdul,  Butler-John- 
stone's  loan  to,  191 


414 


INDEX 


Hamilton,  Archibald,  trip  to  Fiji 
Islands  with,  114,  115,  117 

Hamilton,  Lord  George,  385 

Hancock,  General,  200 

Harcourt,  Sir  William,  character 
and  career,  incidents  concern- 
ing, etc.,  356-358;  opinion  of 
Lord  Beaconsfield,  358 

Hardie,  Keir,  330 

Harney,  George  Julian,  270 

Harpending,  Lent  and  Rhubery, 
mining  fraud  engineered  by, 
179-183 

Harris,  Frank,  out-door  speaking, 
316 

Harrison,  Frederic,  sympathy  with 
the  Communards  of  Paris,  145 

Harte,  Bret,  ability  of,  etc.,  172 

Harrington,  Lord.  (See  Devon- 
shire, Duke  of) 

Hartmann,  S.,  meeting  with,  257 

Hatton,  Finch,  279 

Haussmann,  Baron,  transformation 
of  Paris,  142 

Haynau,  Marshal,  62 

Hazell,  head  printer  to  Justice,  338 

Headlam,  Rev.  Stewart,  206 

Heaford,  H.,  312 

Hearn,  Professor,  leader-writer  for 
the  Argus,  98 

Heavyside,  Canon,  23 

Henley,  W.  E.,  ability  of,  etc., 
363 

Hennessey,  Patrick,  279 

Henty,  George,  War  Correspondent 
to  Italian  War  of  1866,  30; 
travel  with,  38;  experience  at 
Udine,  39;  with  H.  M.  Stan- 
ley, 150-151 

Hill,  Mr.,  211 

Hirsch,  Karl,  246 

His  Natural  Life,  by  Marcus  Clarke, 
97-98 

Historical  Basis  of  Socialism,  book 
published  in  1883,  284-286 

Holkar,  Maharajah  of  Indore,  imagi- 
nary report  of  interview  with 
Lord  Randolph  Churchill,  379- 
380 

Home  Rule  Agitation,  American 
support,  193,  203-204 


House  of  Commons,  Irish  plot  of 
assassination,  239-240;  Glad- 
stone's influence  on,  374 

House  of  Lords,  agitation  against 
veto  in  1880,  203 

Hunt,  Ward,  214 

Hunter,  Dr.,  281 

Hurlbert,  William  Henry,  friend- 
ship with,  ability  of,  etc.,  195- 
197,  198,  200,  202;  retirement 
and  death  of,  202 

Huxley,  Thomas,  Literary  contrib- 
utor to  Pall  Mall  Gazette,  148 ; 
refusal  to  sign  Memorial  re 
Kropotkin,  240 

Hyndman,  H.  (grandfather),  char- 
acter and  life,  3-6 

Hyndman,  Colonel,  153 

Hyndman  family,  1-2 

Hyndman,  Henry  Mayers  — 

Early  life,  1,  7-13 ;  at  Cambridge, 
17-22 ;  reading  for  the  Bar,  22 ; 
political  opinions,  47 ;  journal- 
ism as  a  business  declined,  80- 
81 ;  connection  with  Pall  Mall 
Gazette,  29,  148,  188,  204 ;  writ- 
ings under  the  initial  "H," 
150,  159-160;  studies  and 
writings  on  India,  153-165; 
position  in  journalism  and  let- 
ters from  1874,  164-165 ;  writ- 
ings and  opinions  on  Russo- 
Turkish  War,  164-165;  first 
speeches,  165;  marriage,  166; 
idea  of  entering  Parliament, 
184 ;  attitude  to  Socialism,  189- 
190;  editor  of  Justice  and 
other  work,  306,  313 ;  candida- 
ture for  Burnley,  331 ;  flatter- 
ing proposals  to  take  up  other 
career,  363-366;  part  taken 
and  imprisonment  re  "West 
End  Riots,"  367-373;  pecu- 
niary difficulties,  sale  of  house 
in  Devonshire  Street,  etc.,  384; 
result  of  thirty  years'  work, 
406-407 

Books,  pamphlets,  etc.,  written 
by,  "Bankruptcy  of  India," 
159-161;  Commune  for  London, 
A,  3S3;  "Dawn  of  a  Revolu- 


INDEX 


415 


tionary  Epoch,"  206-207 ;  Eco- 
nomics of  Socialism,  285  (note} ; 
England  for  All  (see  that  title) ; 
Historical  Basis  of  Socialism, 
284-285;  "Indian  Policy  and 
English  Justice,"  156;  Sum- 
mary of  the  Principles  of  So- 
cialism, 286  (written  in  collabo- 
ration with  William  Morris) 
(See  also  Italian  War,  Justice, 
Social  Democratic  Federation, 
names  of  places,  etc.) 

Hyndman,  Hugh,  in  Paris  during 
the  Commune,  146 

Hyndman,  John  Beckles,  1,  6 

Hyndman,  Mrs.  H.  M.,  marriage, 
166;  work  in  connection  with 
provision  of  free  meals  for 
children,  272-273 

Hyndman  Trust,  6-7 

Iddesleigh,  Lord,  restoration  of 
Mysore  to  native  rule  and 
support  of  new  reform  policy 
for  India  in  1879,  155,  162,  163  ; 
proposal  to  renounce  Socialist 
agitation  for  other  successful 
career,  366 

,Jglesias,  Pablo,  effect  of  speech  in 
England,  395 

Ignatieff,  Count,  190 

Ilbert,  Sir  Courtenay,  382 

India,  English  administration,  153— 
165,  320;  alternative  policy 
proposed,  and  accepted  by  Con- 
servatives, 161-164;  Liberal 
Government  rejection  of  reform 
in  1880,  163-164;  famines  of 
1876-1879, 159 ;  Mansion  House 
fund  for  relief  of  distress,  and 
protest  against  Government 
methods,  385-386.  (See  also 
names  of  places) 

Indian  Policy  and  English  Justice, 
pamphlet,  156 

Indianapolis,  description  of  Presi- 
dential election  in  the  city  of, 
201-202 

Insurance,  compulsory,  system  pro- 
posed by  Rev.  L.  Blackley, 
278-279 


"International  Association,  The," 
226,  232,  246,  250,  252,  256, 
262 

International  Congress  of  1889,  404- 
406 

International  Congress  of  1896,  395 

Ireland,  Irish  affairs  in  1880,  203- 
205;  Establishment  of  Land 
League,  membership,  work,  etc., 
203,  234;  "No  Rent"  mani- 
festo, 235-236 ;  Coercion  meth- 
ods of  Liberal  Government,  and 
revolutionary  results,  237-240. 
(See  also  Home  Rule,  names  of 
places,  etc.) 

Ismail,  Khedive,  sale  of  Suez  Canal 
shares,  150 

Italian  War,  of  1866,,  with  Gari- 
baldi's troops  as  War  Corre- 
spondent for  Pall  Mall  Gazette, 
28-29 ;  food  difficulties,  30-31 ; 
untrained  troops,  32 ;  Monte 
Suello  fight,  32;  Battle  of 
Bezzecca,  34,  37;  horrors  of 
war,  33-35;  hospital  scenes, 
34-35;  review  and  results  of, 
37-38,  40-41 ;  Austrian  officers' 
friendship  for  Italy  and  its 
people,  41 

Italy,  travels  in,  impressions  of, 
etc.,  24,  38,  40-41,  45.  (See 
also  names  of  places) 

Janin,  Henry,  182-183 

Janin,  Louis,  181,  182 

Jaures,  Jean,  character  and  appear- 
ance, 396-399 ;  compared  with 
Liebknecht,  396-398;  oratori- 
cal ability,  290,  398-400 ;  opin- 
ion on  Dreyfus  case,  400,  401— 
402;  view  of  German  policy, 
403 

Jennings,  Louis,  183 

Jeune,  Lady.     (See  St.  Helier,  Lady) 

Jones,  Ernest,  11,  270 

Joynes,  J.  L.,  career,  280;  on  staff 
of  Justice,  307 

Jung,  Hermann,  252 

Jung,  Sir  Salar,  mission  to  England 
concerning  Berars  provinces, 
155-158 


416 


INDEX 


Justice,  starting  of,  306-309;  sale 
of,  in  the  streets,  307;  fable 
of  "The  Monkeys  and  the 
Nuts"  quoted,  308;  "All  for 
the  Cause, "  by  W.  Morris,  pub- 
lished in,  311;  printing  and 
other  difficulties,  337-338,  383 

Karslake,  Sir  W.  W.,  opinion  on 
Berars  provinces  question,  156 

Kautsky,  Karl,  265 

Keay,  Seymour,  author  of  "Spoil- 
ing the  Egyptians,"  156 

Kellner,  Sir  George,  163,  190 

Kellogg,  Miss  Clara  Louise,  181 

Kelly,  connection  with  "Fair  Trade 
League,"  367 

King  Edward  VII.  at  Cambridge,  21 

King,  Clarence,  182-183 

Kinnear,  Boyd,  service  in  Italian 
War  of  1866,  32;  friendship 
with,  52;  Radical  candidature 
for  Fifeshire,  85,  87-88;  ac- 
quaintance with  Marx,  257 

Kipling,  Rudyard,  early  contribu- 
tions to  National  Observer,  363 

Knowles,  Sir  James,  160,  207 

Kossuth,  57 

Kovalevsky,  assistance  given  by, 
at  a  hospital  during  Italian 
War  of  1866,  34-35 

Kropotkin,  Prince,  anarchist  prin- 
ciples of,  etc.,  240-245 

La  Russia  Sotteranea,  by  Stepniak, 
translation  of,  etc.,  80 

Labouchere,  Henry,  267,  358 

Labour  Emancipation  League,  205 

Lafargue,  Paul,  265,  405 

Laing,  Samuel,  103 

Land  League.     (See  Ireland) 

Land  League  of  Great  Britain,  234- 
236 

Lane,  Joseph,  226 

Lang,  Andrew,  188 

Lassalle,  Ferdinand,  work  of,  and 
consolidation  of  Socialistic  par- 
ties in  Germany,  252,  256,  263, 
284,  393-394 

Lathbury,  D.,  contributor  to  Pall 
Matt  Gazette,  148 


Laurence,  Samuel,  at  Seaford,  69 

Lecky,  W.  E.  H.,  amongst  audience 
at  open-air  meetings,  317 ;  ap- 
pearance, etc.,  362 

Lee,  H.  W.,  secretary  of  Demo- 
cratic Federation,  317 

Lees,  Captain,  visit  to  New  York 
with,  139-141 

Lent,  Bill,  connection  with  mining 
fraud,  179-182 

Leslie,  John,  verse  on  W.  Morris 
in  Justice,  335 

Letters  to  Sorge  referred  to,  231,  330 

Levey,  George  Collins,  103 

Levuka,  population,  situation,  etc., 
115-116 

Lewes,  George  Henry,  literary  con- 
tributor to  Pall  Mall  Gazette, 
148 

Liberal  Party,  rejection  of  Indian 
Government  Reform  policy  in 
1880,  163 ;  methods,  269-270 

Liebknecht,  Wilhelm,  attitude  to 
Democratic  Federation,  388- 
389 ;  statesmanlike  qualities 
and  ability,  388,  389,  391,  395, 
396;  life  and  experiences  in 
England  during  exile,  390;  in- 
ternational experience  and  in- 
fluence, 390 ;  consolidation  and 
principles  of  German  Social 
Democracy,  252,  263,  391,  392- 
395 ;  friendship  with,  390,  395- 
396,  403;  public  speaking 
ability,  391,  396;  self-sacri- 
fice and  imprisonment,  391- 
392,  397,  398;  opposition 
to  war  with  France,  392;  pe- 
cuniary position,  390,  397 ;  ap- 
pearance, 398;  Jaures  com- 
pared with,  397-398;  opinion 
on  Dreyfus  case,  400-402 ;  view 
of  German  policy,  402;  death 
of,  403 

"Lights  and  Shades  of  American 
Politics,"  article  in  Fortnightly 
Review,  194 

Linnell,  296,  367 

Lloyd,  Mr.,  279 

Lluellyn,  Raymond,  friendship  with, 
etc.,  47-48 


INDEX 


417 


London  Municipal  Government,  part 
taken  in  reorganisation  of,  383 

London  Poor,  investigation  into 
condition  of,  by  Democratic 
Federation  and  Mr.  Charles 
Booth,  303-305 

Lothrein,  influence  over  Queen  Vic- 
toria, 156-157 

Lowe,  Robert  (Lord  Sherbrooke), 
opinion  as  to  Cabinet  Minister's 
influence  on  legislation,  102- 
103  ;  personal  appearance,  etc., 
103-104,  109 ;  epitaph  on,  104 

Lowther,  James,  opinion  of  Dis- 
raeli, 214 

M'Carthy,  Justin,  foundation  of 
Democratic  Federation,  226 ; 
letter  from,  quoted,  234-235; 
Irish  affairs  in  1881,  238 

Macdonald,  James,  226 

Macdonald,  stabbed  in  Rome,  25 

Macdonald,  Ramsay,  283,  330 

Macleay,  Sir  William,  102 

Macnaghten,  Chester,  10 

Mackail,  J.  W.,  330 

Maine,  Sir  Henry,  literary  con- 
tribution to  Pall  Mall  Gazette, 
148 

Mann,  Tom,  281,  341 

Markham,  Wolseley,  133 

Marlborough,  Duke  of,  376 

Marriott,  Sir  William,  209 

Martin,  Sir  Theodore,  348 

Marx,  Eleanor,  speech  made  by, 
318;  connection  with  Dr.  Ed- 
ward Aveling,  262,  388,  389 

Marx,  Karl,  theories,  influence,  etc., 
246-254,  259-261,  263-265, 391 ; 
compared  with  Mazzini,  60-64, 
246-247;  first  interview  with, 
247-248 ;  character  and  appear- 
ance, 247-249,  259;  capacity 
for  work,  250;  judgment  of 
men,  248,  252,  262;  little 
known  to  British  public,  249- 
250 ;  opinion  on  Eastern  ques- 
tion, 251-252 ;  management 
of  the  "International,"  252; 
capacity  for  being  open  to 
conviction,  253 ;  friendship 

2E 


with,  253,  256-257,  259; 
breach  with,  after  publication 
of  England  for  All,  230,  259, 
261 ;  pecuniary  difficulties,  254- 
256 ;  opinion  of  Henry  George's 
writings,  258-259 ;  consolida- 
tion of  Sweitzer  and  Marx 
parties,  252,  263,  393 

Marx,  Mrs.,  254-256,  260 

Maurice,  General  Sir  Frederick, 
schoolfellow,  13 ;  incident  while 
staying  with,  50-51 

Mayers,  Caroline  Seyliard,  1 

Mayers,  Colonel,  153 

Mayers,  Margarette,  instance  of 
telepathy  concerning,  133-135 

Mazzini,  Giuseppe,  career  and  char- 
acter, 52-54;  interview  with, 
52,  54,  217,  246;  appearance, 
manner,  etc.,  55-56 ;  knowledge 
of  English  language,  57 ;  policy 
contrasted  with  that  of  Cavour, 
59-60;  ideals  and  beliefs,  60, 
61,  64 ;  views  on  assassination, 
62-63 ;  compared  with  Marx, 
60,  63-64,  246-247 

Melbourne,  life  in,  etc.,  91,  105,  110 ; 
Melbourne  Club,  89-91 

Meredith,  George,  at  Venice,  42; 
friendship  with,  65,  69;  at 
Seaford,  69;  conversation  and 
writings,  artificiality,  etc.,  70- 
71,  74-77,  81-82;  visit  to 
Cambridge,  71-73 ;  meeting 
with  in  Italy,  73 ;  correspon- 
dent to  Morning  Post,  74; 
quarrel  with  Sala,  75,  195; 
review  of  Beauchamp's  Career, 
76;  second  marriage,  77-78, 
79;  vegetarian  whim,  78-79; 
life  at  Box  Hill,  79-80,  81; 
failing  health,  81 ;  poem  by, 
quoted,  82-83 ;  correspondence 
with,  quoted,  83-84 ;  death  of, 
84 

Merlino,  Dr.,  405 

Metcalfe,  Sir  Charles,  154 

Meyer,  Dr.  Rudolph,  191,  215 

Michell,  E.  B.,  in  Paris  during  the 
Commune,  146-147 

Michie,  Sir  Archibald,  102 


418 


INDEX 


Millerand,  M.,  300 

Missionaries,  impressions  of,  123-128 

''Monkeys  and  the  Nuts,  The," 
fable  quoted  from  Justice,  308 

Moore,  Mr.,  Wesley  an  missionary 
in  Fiji,  12S-127 

Morgan,  "Bill,"  connection  with 
Democratic  Federation,  226, 
233-234 

Morgan,  Charles,  24 

Morgan,  Lewis  H.,  author  of  An- 
cient Society,  124,  253 

Morley,  John,  visit  to  George 
Meredith,  82 ;  connection  with 
Pall  Mall  Gazette,  148,  188,  189 ; 
private  letter  to,  re  class  war 
in  U.  S.  A.,  193-194 ;  arrange- 
ment with,  as  to  writing  for 
Pall  Mall  Gazette,  204 ;  policy  re 
India  and  Ireland,  161,  203-204 

Morley,  Samuel,  chairman  of  public 
meeting  re  scheme  of  compul- 
sory insurance,  278-279 

Mormonism,  conditions  of  life  under, 
history  of  movement,  etc.,  166- 
170 

Morris,  Sir  Lewis,  349 

Morris,  William,  literary  powers, 
320;  political  views,  319-320; 
connection  with  Democratic 
Federation  and  Socialist  views, 
271,  319-320,  327,  334-335; 
success  of,  career,  influence 
of,  etc.,  320-321;  friendship 
and  co-operation  with,  321- 
322,  326-328;  "Summary  of 
the  Principles  of  Socialism," 
written  in  collaboration  with, 
286,  327;  appearance,  charac- 
ter, ability,  etc.,  322-326,  334- 
335,  336;  Kelmscott  House, 
323;  identification  of  illumi- 
nated missals,  325-326;  writ- 
ings for  Justice,  307,  311,  327; 
party  split,  results  and  recon- 
ciliation, 318,  328-332,  335; 
scheme  of  Socialist  unity,  332- 
333;  last  speech,  333;  illness 
and  death,  334 

Mueller,  Baron  von,  anecdote  con- 
cerning, 108 


Murray,  James  and  Charles,  226 
Myers,   Frederick,  in  Paris  during 

the  Commune,  146 
Mysore,    restoration   of,    to   native 

rule,  155,  162 

Naoroji,  Dadabhai,  author  of  Pov- 
erty of  India,  160-161 

Napoleon  III.,  anecdote  concern- 
ing interview  with  Professor 
Duruy,  198-200;  transforma- 
tion of  Paris,  142 

Nevill,  Lady  Dorothy,  opinion  on 
attitude  of  the  aristocracy  to 
Socialism,  353-355 

New  University  Club,  cause  of  ex- 
pulsion from,  etc.,  368,  382-383 

New  York,  visits  to,  friendships 
made,  etc.,  139-141,  195-203 

Nicolini,  57 

Northcote,  Sir  Stafford.  (See  Iddes- 
leigh,  Lord) 

Novikoff,  Mme.,  347 

O'Brien,  Bronterre,  270 

O'Farrell,  attempt  on  the  life  of 
the  Duke  of  Edinburgh,  101 

Oliphant,  Laurence,  incident  con- 
cerning, 197-198 

Oliver,  Sir  S.,  226 

Olivier,  271 

Open-air  speaking,  incidents,  etc., 
313-317,  386-387 

Osborne,  Bernal,  270 

Osborne,  Colonel,  159 

Oxford,  address  on  Socialism  at 
the  Russell  Club,  324 

Oxford  and  Cambridge  Boat  Race,  18 

Pall  Mall  Gazette,  connection  with, 
etc.,  29,  148,  188,  204 

Palmer  and  Co.  of  Hyderabad,  154 

Palmer,  Tom,  parentage,  appear- 
ance, etc.,  154;  Mission  con- 
cerning Berars  Provinces,  155- 
156 

Paris,  charm  and  personality  of, 
142-143 ;  during  the  Commune 
and  after,  142-148,  205;  free 
meals  for  children  experiment, 
272,  276-277 


INDEX 


419 


Parkes,  Sir  Henry,  109 

Parliamentary  elections,  opinion  on 
system,  88-89 

Parnell,  C.  S.,  action  re  "No 
Rent"  manifesto,  235;  release 
from  Kilmainham,  236;  im- 
pressions of,  236 

Patmore,  Coventry,  literary  con- 
tributor to  Pall  Mall  Gazette, 
148 

Perry,  Sir  Erskine,  161 

Peters,  connection  with  "Fair  Trade 
League,"  367 

Petre,  Lord,  excommunication  of, 
179 

Phoenix  Park  assassinations,  238- 
239 

Pigott,  Francis,  anecdote  concern- 
ing Herbert  Spencer,  87-88 

Political  career,  importance  at- 
tached to,  in  England,  216-217 

Political  prisoners,  British  and  for- 
eign methods  compared,  392 

Polynesia,  visit  to,  114;  sharks  in, 
119,  121-123.  (See  also  Fiji 
Islands) 

Positivists,  sympathy  with  the  Com- 
munards of  Paris,  145 

Possibilist  Socialists,  404-406 

Powell,  Professor  York,  eulogy  of 
Mr.  Hyndman's  books  on  So- 
cialism, 285 

"Practical  Remedies  for  Pressing 
Needs,"  public  discussion  on, 
271 

Prescott,  General,  153 

Prevost-Paradol,  143 

Prior,  Melton,  151 

Quelch,  Harry,  member  of  Demo- 
cratic Federation,  271 ;  street- 
corner  speaking  incident,  314- 
315;  debate  with  Burns,  339- 
340 

Rabbit  shooting  in  Australia,  92-93 
Radical,  The,  204 
Rayleigh,  Lord,  10,  21 
Reaney,  Rev.  G.  S.,  344 
Reid,  Whitelaw,  editor  of  the  New 
York  Tribune,  194 


Rhine,  the,  visit  to,  in  early  life,  12 
Rhubery,    connection   with   mining 

fraud,  179-183 
Rice,    Thorndyke,    editor   of    North 

American   Magazine,   acquaint- 
ance with,  etc.,  195,  198 
Richardson,  Mr.,  371 
Riding  school  meeting,  description 

of,  296-298 
Robertson,  "Jack,"  appearance  and 

individuality  of,  109 
Robertsons,  the,  92 
Robinson,  John,  188-189 
Roche,    Misses,    early    training    of 

John  Burns,  339 
Rockhampton,  Australia,  105 
Rogers,  Professor  Thorold,  election 

satire  on  Disraeli,  209-211 
Rome,  impressions  of,  etc.,  in  1866, 

24-27 

Roosevelt,  Theodore,  197 
Rosebery,  Lord,  358,  378 
Rouvier,  M.,  300 
Rowlands,  James,  279 
Rowntree,    Mr.,   investigation  into 

the   condition   of   the   poor   in 

York,  305 
Rowton,  Lord,  223 
Russell,     Sir    Charles,     prosecuting 

counsel  in  "West  End  Riots'! 

trial,  371-372 
Russell,  Sir  William,  154 
Russo-Turkish    War,    writings    and 

opinions   concerning,    164-165; 

Butler- Johnstone's   view,    190- 

191 

Ryder,  Dudley,  195 
Rylott,  Harold,  269 

Sabin,  F.,  234 

Sam,  Aurelio,  meeting  with,  57 

St.  Andrews,  stay  at,  87 

St.  Helier,  Lady,  free  meals  for 
children,  272;  Salon  estab- 
lished by,  interesting  guests, 
etc.,  346-348 

St.  Helier,  Lord,  advice  as  to  de- 
fence in  "West  End  Riots" 
case,  371,  372 

St.  Jullien,  Mrs.,  dinner  party 
catastrophe,  203 


420 


INDEX 


Sala,  G.  A.,  war  correspondent  to 
Italian  War  1866,  30,  74 ;  abil- 
ity and  character  of,  42-44; 
quarrel  with  George  Meredith, 
75,  195 

Salisbury,  Lord,  restoration  of  My- 
sore to  native  rule  in  1880,  and 
support  of  reform  policy  in 
India,  155,  162,  163;  political 
ability  and  career,  190,  214 

Salomons,  Julian,  109 

Salt,  H.  S.,  280,  307 

Salt  Lake  City,  description  of 
visits  to,  166-167,  192,  193; 
"Shooting  at  sight"  tragedy, 
172-175 

Sampson,  Mr.,  city  editor  of  the 
Times,  events  in  connection 
with,  179,  181-183,  184 

San  Francisco,  visit  to,  139;  min- 
eral wealth  and  prosperity, 
171-172 

Scheu,  Andreas,  member  of  Demo- 
cratic Federation,  271;  party 
split  and  reconciliation,  330,  333 

Schweitzer,  von,  Socialistic  theo- 
ries and  consolidation  of  Ger- 
man Social  Democracy,  263, 
393-394 

Scotch  election,  impressions  of,  87 

Seaford,  stay  at,  with  Meredith, 
FitzGerald,  etc.,  69-71 

Sharks  in  Polynesia,  119,  121-123 

Shaw,  Bernard,  member  of  Demo- 
cratic Federation,  271 ;  on 
staff  of  Justice,  307;  Socialist 
Unity  scheme  of  W.  Morris,  332 

Shaw,  "Tommy,"  95-96 

Sleeman,  Sir  William,  159 

"Slumming  Boom,"  in  society,  46- 
48 

Smith,  Adolphe,  advocacy  of  So- 
cialism, 206,  231-232;  treat- 
ment of,  by  Engels,  231-232 

Smith,  George,  sale  of  Pall  Matt 
Gazette,  188 

Smith,  Goldwin,  149 

Snakes  in  Australia,  92-93 

Snowden,  P.,  330 

Social  Democratic  Federation, 
formation  of,  first  conference, 


etc.,  226-230 ;  secretaries,  232- 
233,  346;  work  of,  234,  268- 
269 ;  desertion  of  Radical  party 
and  new  members,  271 ;  public 
discussions  on  "Practical  Reme- 
dies for  Pressing  Needs,"  271 ; 
action  at  public  meeting  re 
Rev.  L.  Blackley's  system  of 
compulsory  insurance,  278-279 ; 
Christian  socialist  members, 
280 ;  development  of  principles, 
286-287 ;  riding  school  meeting, 
296-298 ;  investigation  into  con- 
dition of  London  poor,  303-305 ; 
debates  with  Bradlaugh  at  St. 
James's  Hall,  309-312;  open- 
air  work,  313-317,  386-387; 
position  of,  in  1884,  317-318; 
commemoration  of  the  Com- 
mune of  Paris,  318;  Oxford 
address,  324;  Socialist  resolu- 
tion at  Cambridge  Union,  326; 
party  split  with  Morris,  results 
and  reconciliation,  318,  328- 
333,  335  ;  Morris's  scheme  of  So- 
cialist Unity,  332-333;  "West 
End  Riots,"  367-373;  Dod 
Street  demonstration,  387 ;  Lieb- 
knecht's  attitude  to,  388-389. 
(See  also  Justice) 

Socialism,  British  public  opinion 
on,  in  1880,  205 ;  lack  of  Eng- 
lish literature,  205;  reluctance 
of  English  University  men  and 
professors  to  study,  284-286, 
326-327 ;  development  of 
principles,  286-287;  Morris's 
Socialist  Unity  scheme,  332- 
337;  Lady  Dorothy  Nevill's 
forecast,  353-355;  aid  given 
by  men  of  cultivated  intellect, 
390,  396,  397 ;  position  in  Eng- 
land in  the  present  day,  406- 
407.  (See  also  Germany,  So- 
cial Democratic  Federation, 
names  of  Socialists,  etc.) 

Socialist  League,  formation  and 
breakdown  of,  330-332 ;  Lieb- 
knecht's  support  of,  388 

Somerville,  Mary,  1 

Sorget,  M.,  277 


INDEX 


421 


Spencer,  Herbert,  anecdote  con- 
cerning, 87-88 

Spicer,  Henry,  30,  144-145 

Sport,  prominence  given  to,  in 
educational  life,  18 

Spiiller,  M.,  information  re  Gam- 
betta's  retirement,  362 

Stanley,  Dean,  237 

Stanley,  H.  M.,  Criticism  of  meth- 
ods when  dealing  with  natives, 
151-152 ;  Sir  Richard  Burton's 
opinion  of,  356 

Stanley,  John,  189 

Stanley,  Lord,  346 

Stead,  W.  T.,  first  appearance  in 
London,  188-189 ;  riding  school 
meeting,  295-298 

Stephen,  Fitzjames,  317 

Stephen,  Sir  James,  148 

Stephen,  Leslie,  148 

Stepniak,  S.,  reception  of,  in  Eng- 
land, 62  ;  La  Russia  Sotteranea, 
translation  of,  etc.,  80 

Stockton,  California,  blizzard  expe- 
rience, etc.,  175-177 

Suez  Canal,  Government  purchase 
of  shares  suggested  by  Freder- 
ick Greenwood,  149-150 

Summary  of  the  Principles  of  Social- 
ism, written  in  collaboration 
with  William  Morris,  286 

Sydney,  description  of,  109 

Taylor,  Helen,  referred  to,  226,  266, 

307 

Taylor,  Jonathan,  313 
Tchaikovsky,     Russian     anarchist, 

240 

Teignmouth,  Lord,  159 
Telepathy,  instance  of,  133-135 
"Temple  Club,  The,"  191 
Thaggard,  Captain,  117,  119 
Thakombau,  Fijian  Chief,  123 
Thompson,  Mrs.  Deas,  111 
Thompson,  W.  M.,  204,  371 
Thompson,  Yates,  purchase  of  Pall 

Mall  Gazette,  188 
Thurston,   Mr.,   British   Consul  in 

Fiji,  123 
Thurtell,     Rev.     Alexander,     pupil 

under,  12-14,  17 


Tilden,  "Sam,"  202 

Times,  The  —  Harpending,  Lent, 
and  Rhubery  mining  fraud, 
179,  181-183 

Townsend,  W.,  226 

Trade  Unions  Parliamentary  Com- 
mittee, 319-320 

Traill,  H.  D.,  review  of  Beau- 
champ1  s  Career  by,  76 ;  meeting 
.with  George  Meredith,  77 ; 
literary  contributor  to  Pall  Mall 
Gazette,  148 

Trieste,  visit  to,  in  time  of  cholera, 
38 

Tulloch,  Principal,  87 

Tyrone  election,  269,  270 

Udine,  experience  at,  39 

United  States,  class  war  in,  192-194 ; 
Presidential  elections  described 
and  commented  upon,  201-202 ; 
support  of  Irish  Home  Rule, 
193,  203-204;  "Lights  and 
Shades  of  American  Politics," 
194 ;  travels  in,  194-195.  (See 
also  names  of  places) 

Universities,  English,  reluctance  of 
professors  and  students  to  study 
principles  of  Socialism,  284- 
286,  326-327 

Urquhart,  David,  251 

Vanderbilt,  W.  H.,  181 

Vandervelde,  Emile,  400 

Vaughan,  Cardinal,  meeting  with,  in- 
cident concerning,  etc.,  177-179 

Venice,  restoration  to  Italy,  38 ; 
Austrian  occupation  of,  41 ; 
entry  of  Italian  troops,  42,  44; 
enjoyment  of  visit  to,  42 

Victoria,  visit  to.  (See  names  of 
places) 

Victoria,  Queen,  attitude  to  Berars 
Provinces  question,  155, 157, 158 

Vignati,  at  Seaford,  69 

Vimercati,  Countess,  191—192 

Vincent,  Henry,  270 

Viviani,  M.,  300 

Walker,  editor  of  the  Daily  News, 
148 


422 


INDEX 


Wallas,  Graham,  271 

Ward,  John,  341 

Ware,  Matilda.  (See  Hyndman, 
Mrs.  H.  M.) 

Ware,  William,  166 

Warwick,  Lady,  299 

Webb,  Sidney,  332 

Webster,  William,  204,  257 

"West  End  Riots,"  cause  of,  re- 
sults, imprisonment,  etc.,  367- 
373 

Whisky,  impressions  of,  85-86 

White,  Arnold,  debate  with  Jack 
Williams,  344 

Wilde,  Oscar,  ability  and  career, 
348-349 

Williams,  Jack,  member  of  Demo- 
cratic Federation,  226,  227; 
party  split,  329 ;  Socialist  career, 


indefatigable  work  of,  etc.,  343- 
345  ;  debate  with  Arnold  White, 
344-345;  part  taken  in  "West 
End  Riots,"  370-373 

Winks,  234 

Wolff,  Sir  Henry  Drummond,  ac- 
quaintance with,  374 

Woolner,  Thomas,  bust  of  Gladstone 
by,  187 

Working  class  in  England,  M. 
Clemenceau's  opinion  of,  300 

Wright,  Theodore,  267 

York,   investigation  into  condition 

of  the  poor,  305 

Young,  Brigham,  139,  167,  168 
Yule,  Colonel,  151,  240 

Zola,  Emile,  trial  of,  301 


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Reminiscences 

By  GOLDWIN   SMITH,  D.C.L. 
Edited  by  ARNOLD  HAULTAIN 

Cloth,  gilt  top,  8vo,  429  pages,  $3.00  net ;  by  mail,  $3.17 
Illustrated  with  photogravures  and  half-tones 

"  This  autobiography  is  of  especial  interest  to  the  people  of  America,  for 
the  great  Canadian  was  a  British  friend  of  the  North  when  friends  were 
badly  needed.  For  this  reason  the  chapters  on  the  Civil  War  appeal 
most  strongly  to  American  readers,  and  those  who  read  them  will  be 
entertained  by  their  originality  and  sprightliness.  Mr.  Smith  was  in 
close  touch  with  some  of  the  leading  men  of  the  North  and  with  promi- 
nent commanders  in  the  field,  and  his  impressions  gained  from  this 
acquaintanceship  make  highly  interesting  reading."  —  Pittsburg  Chronicle 
Telegraph. 

"  It  is  a  book  of  wide  and  permanent  appeal,  not  only  to  students  of 
politics  and  economics,  but  also  to  the  larger  clientele  of  readers  ever 
willing  to  welcome  a  fresh  record  of  an  inspiring  age."  —  Philadelphia 
North  American. 


An  Irishman's  Story 


By  JUSTIN  MCCARTHY 

Author  of  "A  History  of  Our  Own  Times,"  etc.,  etc. 

Cloth,  8vo,  $2.50  net 

In  this  book  one  of  the  best  representatives  of  Ireland  tells  the  story  of 
his  life  and  work  in  Ireland,  America,  and  England,  and  of  the  interests 
in  and  out  of  Ireland  which  have  occupied  his  working  years.  Mr. 
McCarthy  is  one  of  the  most  picturesque  and  graphic  and  engaging  of 
modern  authors.  His  work  as  reporter  of  the  House  of  Commons  gave 
him  a  thorough  knowledge  of  English  politics  and  of  newspaper  life  ;  and 
he  has  always  been  actively  interested  in  many  different  causes,  and  in- 
timately connected  in  one  way  or  another  with  many  of  the  leading  fig- 
ures in  English  life. 


THE   MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

Publishers  64-66  Fifth  Avenue  New  York 


A  SELECTED  LIST  OF  BIOGRAPHIES  AND  AUTOBIOGRAPHIES 


ACTON,   (LORD)  J.  E.  E. 

Letters  to  Mary  Gladstone,  with 
Memoir  by  H.  Paul 

Illustrated.    Cloth,  8vo,  $3.00  net 
ALLINGHAM,  WILLIAM 

A  Diary 

Edited  by  H.  Allingham  and  D.  Radford 

Cloth,  8w,  $3.75  net 

ARBLAY,   MADAME  D' 

Diary,  Life,  and  Letters  of  Madame  d'Arblay 

•^  Cloth,  8vo,  $15.00  net 

BISMARCK 

Some  Secret  Pages  of  His  History 

By  M.  Busch 

Portraits.    Cloth,  8vo,  $10.00  net 

BROWN,  DR.  JOHN 

Letters  of  Dr.  John  Brown 

Edited  by  his  son  and  D.  W.  Forrest 

Cloth,  8w,  $4.00  net 

CHURCHILL,  LORD  RANDOLPH 

Life  of  Lord  Randolph  Churchill 

By  W.  Spencer  Churchill 

Two  Volumes.    Portraits  and  Illustrations.    8vo,  $0.00  net 

DUMAS,  ALEXANDRE 

My  Memoirs 

Translated  by  E.  M.  Waller 

Six  Volumes.    Illustrated.    Cloth,  I2mo,  each  $1.75  net 

ELLSWORTH,  OLIVER 

The  Life  of  Oliver  Ellsworth 

By  William  Garrott  Brown 

Illustrated.    Cloth,  8vo,  $2.00  net 


EVELYN,  JOHN 

Diary  and  Correspondence  of  John  Evelyn 

Edited  by  Austin  Dobson 

Three  Volumes.    Illustrated.    Cloth,  8vo,  $8.00  net 

FRANKLIN,  BENJAMIN 

Life  and  Writings  of  Benjamin  Franklin 

Edited  by  A.  H.  Smyth 

Ten  Volumes.    Illustrated.     Cloth,  I2mo,  $15.00  net 

GLADSTONE,  W.  E. 

The  Life  of  W.  E.  Gladstone 

By  John  Morley 

Two  Volumes.    Portraits.    Cloth,  8vo,  $5.00  net 

HAYNE,  ROBERT  Y. 

Robert  Y.  Hayne  and  His  Times 

By  Theodore  D.  Jervey 

Illustrated.     Cloth,  8vo,  $3.00  net 

HOHENLOHE-SCHILLINGSFUERST,  PRINCE  OF 

The  Memoirs  of  Prince  Chlodwig  of  Hohenlohe 

Authorized  by  Prince  Alexander  of  Hohenlohe.     Edited  by  F.  Curtius 

Two  Volumes.     Cloth,  8vo,  $6.00  net 

IRVING,  SIR  HENRY 

Personal  Reminiscences  of  Sir  Henry  Irving 

By  Bram  Stoker 

Two  Volumes.    Illustrated.     Cloth,  8vo,  $7.50  net 

LINCOLN,  ABRAHAM 

Abraham  Lincoln :  The  Man  of  the  People 

By  Norman  Hapgood 

Illustrated.     Cloth,  8w,  $2.00  net 

Abraham  Lincoln  :  The  Boy  and  the  Man 

By  James  Morgan 

Illustrated.     Cloth,  i2mo,  $1.50  net 


O'BRIEN,  WILLIAM 

Recollections 

Cloth,  8vo,  $3.50  net 
RIIS,  JACOB  A. 

The  Making  of  an  American 

An  Autobiography 

Illustrated.    Cloth,  i2mo,  $1.50  net 

ROOSEVELT,  THEODORE 

Theodore  Roosevelt :  The  Boy  and  the  Man 

By  James  Morgan 

Illustrated.     Cloth,  i2mo,  $1.50  net 

SHAKESPEARE,  WILLIAM 

Life  of  William  Shakespeare 

By  Sidney  Lee 

Cloth,  i2mo,  $2.25  net 

Shakespeare  :  Poet,  Dramatist,  and  Man 

By  Hamilton  W.  Mabie 

Illustrated.     Cloth,  8110,  $2.00  net 

WESLEY,  JOHN 

The  Life  of  John  Wesley 

By  Caleb  T.  Winchester 


Illustrated.    Cloth,  8vo,  $1.50  net 


WHIPPLE,  HENRY  B. 

Lights  and  Shadows  of  a  Long  Episcopate 

Cloth,  8vo,  $2.50  net 


WOLFF,   (SIR)  HENRY  D. 

Rambling  Recollections 


Two  volumes.     Cloth,  8vo,  $7.50  net 


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Publishers  64-66  Fifth  Avenue  New  York 


26  8P  82 


U.  C.  BERKELEY  LIBRARIES 


